Nature, Environment, Climate Change, Ecology

‘Most at risk on the planet’: Polar heritage sites are slipping into the sea but can one island live forever online?

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 05:00:10 -0500

On Qikiqtaruk, off Canada’s Yukon coast, scientists are wielding virtual-reality cameras, 3D models and digital archives to protect the island’s history and culture before it disappears

It was early July when the waters of the Beaufort Sea crept, then rushed, over the gravel spit of a remote Arctic island. For hours, the narrow strip of land, extending like the tail of a comma into the waters, gradually disappeared into the ocean.

When Canadian scientists on Qikiqtaruk (also known as Herschel Island), off the coast of Canada’s Yukon territory, surveyed the deluge, they saw a grimly comical scene unfold.

Engineered bacteria could break down unrecyclable nylon in clothes

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 05:00:02 -0500

Clothes and fishing nets that are made of nylon often end up in landfill or dumped in oceans, but a new way to break down the plastic could improve recycling

Stunning image shows the closest ever Einstein ring

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 03:00:40 -0500

Albert Einstein himself thought that the eponymous Einstein ring would be impossible to observe, but the Euclid telescope has picked one up just 600 million light years from Earth

More than 1,100 dead sea turtles washed up along southern India’s coastline

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:09 -0500

The mass death of once-endangered olive ridley turtles in January has prompted an increase in wildlife patrols and a crackdown on fishing boats

More than 1,100 dead olive ridley sea turtles have washed ashore on the beaches of Tamil Nadu state in southern India this January.

“I never heard [of] such large numbers of turtles stranded at any beaches of Tamil Nadu at least in the last three decades,” Kuppusamy Sivakumar, an ecology professor at Pondicherry University said.

Storm brings hail to Harden in NSW – video

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 22:53:38 -0500

Storm brings hail to Harden in NSW – video

Charlotte O’Dwyer became the face of black summer’s terrible toll. Five years after the fires her family looks back

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 14:00:07 -0500

On this day in 2020 the worst of the massive bushfires finally went out – but Australia had little time to grieve as the Covid pandemic took hold. Five years on, we examine the wounds of that summer

Air pollution causing 1,100 cases a year of main form of lung cancer in UK

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 08:56:36 -0500

Exclusive: Health experts and cancer charities say findings should serve as wake-up call to ministers

More than 1,100 people a year in the UK are developing the most prevalent form of lung cancer as a result of air pollution, the Guardian can reveal.

Exposure to toxic air was attributed to 515 men and 590 women in the UK in 2022 getting adenocarcinoma – now the most dominant of the four main subtypes of lung cancer – an analysis by the World Health Organization’s cancer agency found.

Air traffic control to Sir Keir: turbulence ahead | Stewart Lee

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 05:00:47 -0500

There’s no point trying to make plans around the whims of Trump. The PM instead needs to turn to Europe

To Elon Musk, I say this! To perform one Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, might be considered a misfortune. To perform two Nazi salutes at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, begins to look like carelessness.

I didn’t write that joke. I have cannibalised it from one by the gay Irish Victorian Oscar Wilde, a typical diversity hire who would have achieved nothing had his work not been promoted by the famously woke 19th-century British establishment. Luckily, Wilde was dead long before he had the opportunity to emigrate to the US and take an air traffic controller job from a more deserving straight white male, where his gayness would have caused planes to crash.

Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf this year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July

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Promoting green growth does not make you an ‘eco-nutter’. It’s the only way forward

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 04:00:46 -0500

Heading off the environmental crisis and growing the economy are not at odds. They are two sides of a coin – as our politicians should realise

If you care about the world we are handing on to future generations, the news on Thursday morning was dramatic. This January was the warmest on record; temperatures in 18 of the past 19 months have exceeded pre-industrial averages by 1.5C. There can be no comfort that the epoch-changing climate crisis is 20 or even 10 years away. It is already upon us.

Temperatures should have been moderated this winter by cooler air over the Pacific; it did not happen. Scientists are bewildered and scared. James Hansen, doyen of climate crisis research, believes that, unless this pace of deterioration is reversed, warm ocean waters flowing from the southern to the northern hemisphere will be trapped as vast sea currents cease. Sea levels will rise to impose a civilisational threat. It is a global imperative to dial down the rate of carbon emissions.

‘It’s about escaping from yourself’: wildlife presenter Gordon Buchanan

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 04:00:45 -0500

Gordon Buchanan has spent years observing the wild world as one of Scotland’s most respected nature cameramen and presenters. Now he’s turned his focus closer to home. He opens up about his adventurous childhood and what animals have taught him about living well

Gordon Buchanan is what’s called a super- recogniser. That means the 52-year-old wildlife presenter and cameraman from Scotland has a near-unfathomable recall of faces he has seen only fleetingly. In tests at the University of Greenwich, he has memorised thousands of humans after only having looked at them once. Buchanan also scored well on chimp faces, but drew a blank with pugs. “What I learned from that particular study is that pugs really do all look the same,” he notes drily.

For the most part this isn’t an especially useful – or monetisable – skill. The day before we meet, he was walking down Byres Road in Glasgow’s West End with his wife, Wendy, when he noticed two people who looked familiar. “That’s the couple who are in the Airbnb,” he told Wendy, referring to the property they rent out at the back of their house. Buchanan had never met them; he was just going by the thumbnail photograph that was on the woman’s profile. Wendy knows well enough by now not to question his random spots, but Buchanan scrolled through his phone to prove his point. “Definitely her!” he said.

Nimbys. Naysayers. Traitors. Children take note, why learn oracy when insults will do? | Catherine Bennett

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 02:00:44 -0500

Keir Starmer’s rhetoric against green campaigners appears to have taken a playground turn

Before the last election, in what was billed as his “most personal interview yet”, Keir Starmer said: “I’m not in the habit of bandying insults around”. It was once part of his appeal, or meant to be, that his speech was polite, even to the point of colourless, in contrast to the ugly gibberish streaming out of Boris Johnson, then Liz Truss. When the Tories went low, Starmer went sorrowful headteacher. “I don’t think Boris Johnson is a bad man,” he said in one speech, “I think he is a trivial man.”

His favourite word, these days, is “nimbys”. Starmer uses it so freely he’s personally breathed new life into the original acronym (“not in my back yard”), revealing along the way its largely unexplored potential to create national disharmony. Why restrict such a genius jibe to arguments about ring roads and executive homes? Last week’s headlines about his plan for nuclear power expansion – typically, “Starmer to ‘push past nimbyism’ in pledge to expand nuclear power sites” – are only the latest in which Starmer demonstrates how any opposition to any scheme with environmental consequences can be represented, by a skilled litigator like himself, as nimbyism: purely selfish, irrational and against the common good. Unlike the visionary tech overlords such as Google, Meta and Amazon, which Starmer invited, in the same speech, to profit, with their data centres, from the UK nimbys’ certain defeat. His government’s pro-nuclear press release featured praise from similarly patriotic, non-nimby-infested corporations, such as EDF and Microsoft.

Keir Starmer urged to resist pressure to permit Rosebank North Sea oilfield

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 02:00:43 -0500

Leading climate group warns of damage to green agenda if giant project goes ahead

Keir Starmer will do huge damage to the global fight against climate change if he gives in to political pressure and allows the development of a giant new oilfield in the North Sea, according to an analysis by the country’s leading environmental institute.

Chaired by Nicholas Stern, the Grantham Institute on Climate Change will fire a warning shot to ministers not to give the green light to the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields, after suggestions that the Treasury is now in favour of allowing drilling to maximise economic growth.

People are just realising why spotting a ladybug this winter could 'bring you luck'

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 02:00:00 -0500

Ladybirds are often associated with good luck and prosperity, but it turns out they are also seen as a symbol of hope and transformation.

Victoria’s Halls Gap survived the flames – but as tourists stay away the dark clouds remain

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 18:00:34 -0500

Resilience is wearing thin in the town, with business owners facing mass booking cancellations and insurers turning their backs

The tourist road from Dunkeld to Halls Gap is eerily quiet. Blackened trees stretch spidery branches towards a sky still smudged with smoke. The road is open but few cars take it save for a wildlife rescue vehicle inching slowly along, its occupants scanning the burnt-out forest for limping wallabies reported in the area. A lone currawong shrieks, invisible.

Fire ripped through this part of the Grampians/Gariwerd national park six weeks ago, and still burns on the other side of the mountain range – an immense rocky ridge jutting out through the smoke haze. But already new growth is starting to sprout. Green spikes burst from the charcoal stumps of grass-trees. Near a dry creek bed, tiny fern fronds unfurl out of the ash.

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I live in a forest my parents planted when I was a child. It’s not too late for you to grow one too | Jessie Cole

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 18:00:34 -0500

Sometimes a branch grows so low and bushy that it blocks access to my room. I diligently cut it back

More summer essentials

In the late 1970s when my parents built the house I still live in, there was no forest. The property was a disused cow pasture, full of scrappy grass and weeds. My parents began planting trees before they began the house build, and now – in my lifespan, 47 years – it has grown into a forest. When I was a child, we called my parent’s plantings “the garden”, implying a place managed by us. Cultivated, civilised. Somewhere along the way we renamed it “the forest”. A self-managed ecosystem we occasionally impinged upon – cutting back, cleaning up debris – but only when it made incursions into our actual house.

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Where the heart is: the artist memorialising homes lost in the LA fires – in pictures

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 12:00:26 -0500

On 10 January, as fires raged across Los Angeles, local portrait artist Asher Bingham made an offer via an Instagram reel: “ To anyone that has lost a home in the #LAfires I will draw [it] for free.” She had already drawn the house of a close friend that had burned down; by offering her services more widely, she hoped to help others grieve for what they’d lost. She wasn’t prepared for the response. So many people sent in photos – 1,300 and counting – that she had to recruit volunteers to keep up with demand. For Bingham, it’s all about the small details: wind chimes, potted plants. “Anywhere I can see people put love into their home, I draw it,” she says. “I’m trying to recreate a memory that only lives in their minds of the beautiful time they lived there.”

See more on instagram.com/asherbingham.fineart

Western food was unhealthy and costly. So they turned back to bison and mushrooms

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 11:00:24 -0500

The Siċaŋġu Nation in South Dakota is building community and climate resilience through traditional foods

On a Wednesday summer evening on the Rosebud Reservation, members of the Siċaŋġu Nation arrange 12 tables to form a U in the parking lot of a South Dakota Boys & Girls Club. The tables at the Siċaŋġu Harvest Market are laden with homemade foods for sale: tortillas, cooked beans, pickles and fresh-squeezed lemonade.

The market is one of many ways the non-profit increases access to traditional and healthful foods that also happen to come with a low climate impact. The Lakota, of which Siċaŋġu is one of seven nations, were traditionally hunters and gatherers, but today, the Siċaŋġu Co non-profit is building on both new and old traditions to fulfill its mission.

‘Backsliding’: most countries to miss vital climate deadline as Cop30 nears

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 03:00:17 -0500

Developing countries urge biggest polluters to act as Trump’s return to the White House heightens geopolitical turmoil

The vast majority of governments are likely to miss a looming deadline to file vital plans that will determine whether or not the world has a chance of avoiding the worst ravages of climate breakdown.

Despite the urgency of the crisis, the UN is relatively relaxed at the prospect of the missed date. Officials are urging countries instead to take time to work harder on their targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions and divest from fossil fuels.

What lies beneath: Melbourne’s often maligned surf has created a growing snorkelling scene

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 18:00:05 -0500

One dedicated Facebook group now has almost 20,000 members, attracted by sea life found just metres from Port Phillip Bay’s shore

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Wading into the warm crystal-clear water at the northern end of Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay – bearing flippers, a snorkel and a mask – a colourful underwater wonderland teeming with life opens up just metres from the shoreline.

Within a few minutes, we spot a tiny headshield slug and a pygmy squid (the smallest known species of squid in the world). A little further out at the popular Ricketts Point snorkelling spot in Boonwurrung country, we found ourselves floating above a southern fiddler ray (also known as a banjo shark) nestling in the sea grasses and subtidal reef below.

An Arctic 'beyond recognition' by 2100

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 15:27:21 -0500

Based on the current pledges of countries for limiting their emissions of greenhouse gases, global temperatures are projected to reach 2.7 degrees Celsius beyond pre-industrial levels by the end of this century. A new review paper highlights how this would dramatically reshape the Arctic, the fastest-warming region of Earth.

Astronomers have spotted the largest known object in the universe

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 14:09:07 -0500

The Quipu superstructure is enormous, spanning 1.4 billion light years – and it could violate one of our fundamental assumptions about the universe

Robot made from pig gelatin biodegrades when no longer needed

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 14:00:06 -0500

Pig gelatin can be used to make a robotic arm that safely biodegrades, rather than adding to landfill

We are all bad at choosing random numbers in our own unique way

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:00:43 -0500

An experiment in which people were asked to choose random numbers or boxes on a grid, then do the same a year later, has revealed that we each have our own unique approach to randomness - and we're generally very bad at it

Old fighter jets can be melted down and 3D printed into new ones

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:00:01 -0500

Turning old fighter jets into a fine powder and using that to 3D print new components is a more sustainable way to build the RAF's next-generation aircraft – and it avoids sourcing materials from Russia

Is Elon Musk's DOGE going to break decades-old US government software?

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:55:19 -0500

Elon Musk's DOGE task force is reportedly being given unchecked access to the computers that run the US government, and experts warn that it risks bringing down systems and leaking sensitive data

'I'm a dog trainer – there's one breed that's a big mistake for new owners'

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:53:00 -0500

A canine behaviour expert has shared the one breed he believes is a "big mistake" for new owners.

Is the UK about to force Apple to reveal all of your encrypted data?

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:24:21 -0500

A report in The Washington Post says that the UK government has ordered Apple to reveal encrypted data held by any user, anywhere in the world – here is what you need to know

Dexterous and light prosthetic hand can tie knots and comb hair

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:00:31 -0500

A prosthetic hand that weighs about half that of a human hand also enables wearers to carry out intricate tasks, such as tying knots

Killer Whales Teach Young To Hunt

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 10:00:28 -0500

The team films something not seen before: an hours-long teaching session between adults and their young. Killer whales are one of only a handful of animals that actively teach their young, and it's the females that take on this duty, ensuring the survival of their families.

The post Killer Whales Teach Young To Hunt appeared first on Nature.

Detox your kitchen: three things you can do right now to avoid toxic chemicals

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 10:00:04 -0500

Pfas and microplastics lurk everywhere – from pots and pans to storage containers and utensils. These simple changes are a first step in reducing them quickly

It seems like every week there is a new scientific study about microplastics in food, Pfas in pans, BPA in plastic containers, or any other number of toxic chemicals that can stow away in our food.

I’ve been writing about toxic chemicals for years, and my friends always ask me: what do I do about it all? The list of things to worry about can seem overwhelming.

The ocean is losing its ability to store heat as the planet warms up

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 08:36:44 -0500

Until now, 90 per cent of the excess heat created by greenhouse gas emissions has been drawn down into the ocean, but this capacity for heat absorption is now being lost, which could lead to longer marine heatwaves and harm ocean life

AI chip smaller than a grain of salt uses light to decode data

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 05:00:03 -0500

A tiny chip on the tip of a fibre-optic cable can passively harness light to perform AI computations, dramatically reducing the amount of energy and computing power required

Week in wildlife in pictures: a newborn turtle, a tiny frog and a rare tiger

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 03:00:39 -0500

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Humpback whale songs have patterns that resemble human language

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 14:00:56 -0500

The sounds that make up humpback whale songs follow some of the same statistical rules seen in human languages, which may be because of how they are learned

'Marine Prosperity Areas' represent a new hope in conservation

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:37:25 -0500

An international team of researchers introduces a promising new initiative in marine conservation, dubbed 'Marine Prosperity Areas.' This science-informed effort goes beyond protecting marine life -- it uses targeted financial investments to prioritize human well-being, uplift communities, and create a sustainable blue economy.

London Underground mutant mosquitoes have surprisingly ancient origins

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:00:53 -0500

Genetic analysis suggests a form of mosquito found in urban subway systems evolved in the Middle East thousands of years ago

The perfect boiled egg takes more than half an hour to cook

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:00:28 -0500

If you have the patience to repeatedly switch an egg between a hot and a colder pan, you'll be rewarded with an amazing taste and texture, say physicists

Amazing plesiosaur fossil preserves its skin and scales

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:00:11 -0500

A remarkable plesiosaur fossil reveals that the extinct reptiles had scales like modern sea turtles, unlike the ichthyosaurs that lived during the same period

New device can scan your face in 3D from hundreds of metres away

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 10:00:05 -0500

A lidar scanner has a resolution so high it can image ridges and indentations only 1 millimetre deep on objects hundreds of metres away – and capture objects as distant as 1 kilometre

Jeff Bezos fund ends support for climate group amid fears billionaires ‘bowing down’ to Trump

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 07:21:19 -0500

Concerns raised as $10bn Bezos Earth Fund halts funding for Science Based Targets initiative, which monitors companies’ decarbonisation

Jeff Bezos’s $10bn climate and biodiversity fund has halted its funding of one of the world’s most important climate certification organisations, amid broader concerns US billionaires are “bowing down to Trump” and his anti-climate action rhetoric.

The Bezos Earth Fund has stopped its support for the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), an international body that assesses if companies are decarbonising in line with the Paris agreement. Earth Fund had been one of two core funders of the SBTi, with the Ikea Foundation: the two accounted for 61% of its total funding last year. Earth Fund’s decision was first reported by the FT.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 may hit Earth in 2032 – how worried should we be?

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 07:01:01 -0500

The risk of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth seems to be creeping up as astronomers gather more data, but does that mean we should be scrambling to prepare for an impact in 2032?

Snake catchers find 102 red-bellied black snakes found in a single mulch pile in Sydney – video

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 01:26:05 -0500

Dylan Cooper and Cory Kerewaro from Reptile Relocation Sydney have removed 102 red-bellied black snakes from a single mulch pile on a property in western Sydney. Upon arrival they had expected to remove only four red-bellies which had been seen by the owner of the Horsley Park home. But during summer it can be common for some female snakes to congregate and share the same birthing site

Cuddling koalas show unexpected sociable side in surprising video

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 22:00:07 -0500

A group of male koalas were filmed grooming and playing together, in contrast to their solitary reputation, probably as a result of an unusually dense population in southern Victoria

Scientists fear losing essential climate data during Trump upheaval

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 16:20:32 -0500

A temporary loss of access to key datasets on levels of CO2 in the atmosphere added to concern about the potential fallout of the Trump administration’s attacks on climate science

Now reading: Harrison Ford Is Still Full of Surprises

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 14:11:43 -0500

An interview highlights a spate of new roles for the Hollywood actor — and one old one, characterized by his trademark steadfastness.

DeepSeek has burst the AI hype bubble – now all bets are off