Category Archives: Climate crisis

Australia records warmest winter caused by global heating and sunny conditions

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NSW, Queensland and Tasmania experienced hottest winters with spring likely to deliver hotter than average temperatures too

Australia’s winter of 2023 was the warmest since official records began in 1910, with average daily temperatures 1.53C above the long-term average.

According to data from the Bureau of Meteorology released on Friday, the 2023 winter beat the previous record of 1.46C above the average set in 1996. Every winter since 2012 has been warmer than the 30-year average calculated from 1961 to 1990.

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Hurricane Idalia: Georgia declares state of emergency as severe flooding and storm surges hit south-eastern US – live

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The eye of Hurricane Idalia made landfall along the coast of the Florida Big Bend near Keaton Beach around 7.45am Eastern time, the National Hurricane Center said.

The storm’s maximum sustained winds were near 125 mph.

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Hurricane Idalia batters south-eastern US causing storm surges and power outages

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Idalia makes landfall on Florida’s Gulf coast with torrential rains and 125mph winds and heads up coast to Georgia and the Carolinas

Federal officials warned of “catastrophic and life-threatening” flooding across the south-eastern US on Wednesday after Hurricane Idalia crashed ashore in Florida with 125mph winds, torrential rains and surging seawater. Later in the afternoon the storm made its way up the coast to Georgia and the Carolinas.

The powerful storm, which the National Hurricane Center (NHC) called “an unprecedented event”, made landfall shortly after daybreak with 160mph gusts near Keaton Beach on Florida’s Gulf coast.

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Australia news live: ‘no downside, only upside’, PM says, confirming Indigenous voice to parliament referendum date as 14 October

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The formal announcement of a voice referendum date triggers a campaign from both the yes and no camps, before Australians eventually head to the polls. Follow today’s live news updates

Report points to Snowy 2.0 project costs blowing out to $12bn

Nine’s Sydney Morning Herald and the Age are this morning reporting that the cost of Snowy Hydro’s 2.0 giant pumped hydro project has doubled in six months to $12bn.

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China continues coal spree despite climate goals

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World’s biggest carbon emitter approving equivalent of two new coal plants a week, analysis shows

China is approving new coal power projects at the equivalent of two plants every week, a rate energy watchdogs say is unsustainable if the country hopes to achieve its energy targets.

The government has pledged to peak emissions by 2030 and reach net zero by 2060, and in 2021 the president, Xi Jinping, promised to stop building coal powered plants.

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Climate crisis to create ‘acute’ challenges for Australia’s economy, incoming RBA governor says

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Michele Bullock uses speech to detail how central bank is preparing for increased risk of extreme weather events

Global heating will present the Reserve Bank with “acute” challenges, including heightened uncertainty around how the climate will change and the resulting impacts on the economy and financial system, the incoming governor, Michele Bullock, has said.

Bullock, now deputy RBA governor before her elevation to the top post on 18 September, used her Sir Leslie Melville lecture at the Australian National University on Tuesday – after a brief disruption from protesters – to detail how the central bank was preparing for a warming world and the increased risk of extreme weather events.

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Hundreds more rapid charging points installed in UK to help drivers go electric

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Fast charging stations that allow for longer journeys are being added in regions beyond London

Charging companies are plugging the gaps in the UK’s high-speed charger network, with hundreds added this year outside London in a shift that will help end the “range anxiety” that holds back some would-be electric car buyers.

The capital and the south-east still have far more chargers of all speeds – ranging from slow to rapid and ultra-rapid – than the rest of the country. But the presence of high-speed chargers, generally used for quick recharging on longer journeys, is increasing in other regions as electric car sales surge.

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Labour’s David Lammy visits Brazil to build ‘climate justice’ partnership

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Shadow foreign secretary says Starmer government would work with President Lula on radical climate action

The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, has taken his green diplomatic policy for a test spin in Brazil this month in the hope that “climate justice” can serve as an international rallying cry for a future Labour government.

In an interview with the Guardian, Lammy said a Labour victory at the next general election would allow Keir Starmer to build a partnership for radical climate action with Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, before the UN’s Cop30 climate summit in Belém in 2025.

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Bare power lines and ‘obsolete’ poles were possible cause of Hawaii fires

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Hawaiian Electric Co wires were seen uncovered as company’s own documents call its wooden poles a ‘serious public hazard’

In the first moments of the Maui fires, when high winds brought down power poles, slapping electrified wires to the dry grass below, there was a reason the flames erupted all at once in long, neat rows – those wires were bare, uninsulated metal that could spark on contact.

Videos and images analyzed by the Associated Press confirmed those wires were among miles of line that Hawaiian Electric Co left naked to the weather and often-thick foliage, despite a recent push by utilities in other wildfire- and hurricane-prone areas to cover up their lines or bury them.

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Two men accused of lighting wildfires in Greece are arrested

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One man confessed to having set four other fires on island of Evia as Greek authorities struggle to contain blazes

Fire department officials in Greece have arrested two men for allegedly starting wildfires on purpose, while hundreds of firefighters battled blazes that have killed at least 21 people in the past week.

One man was arrested on the Greek island of Evia for allegedly setting fire to dried grass in the Karystos area. The fire department said the man confessed to having set four other fires in the area in July and August.

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Indonesia’s tropical Eternity Glaciers could vanish within years, experts say

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El Niño weather pattern could accelerate melting, leading to sea level rise

Two of the world’s few tropical glaciers, in Indonesia, are melting and their ice may vanish by 2026 or sooner as an El Niño weather pattern threatens to accelerate their demise, the country’s geophysics agency has said.

The agency, known as BMKG, has said the El Niño phenomenon could lead to the most severe dry season in Indonesia since 2019, increasing the risk of forest fires and threatening supplies of clean water.

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Republicans ‘deserve to lose’ if they fail to address climate crisis, says activist

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Benji Backer, executive director of conservative climate group, calls question on crisis in debate ‘historic’ but laments answers

Republicans “deserve to lose” electorally if they can’t show they care about the climate crisis, according to the head of a conservative climate organization that put forward a rare question on the issue to GOP candidates in Wednesday’s televised debate.

The Republican presidential hopefuls, minus Donald Trump, were asked at the Fox News debate what they would do to improve the party’s standing on climate policy by Alexander Diaz, a young conservative who is part of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), a youth conservative group that pushes for action on the climate crisis.

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Asylum seekers in Greece ‘facing two great injustices of our time’

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Amnesty links wildfires and lack of legal migration routes to deaths of 19 people believed to be asylum seekers

Refugees and migrants in Greece are facing off against the “two great injustices of our times”, Amnesty International has said, as it linked wildfires and scant access to legal migration routes to the deaths of 19 people believed to be asylum seekers.

As wildfires continue to rage across swathes of Greece, authorities in the country said they were working to identify the charred remains of 18 people found this week in the dense forests that straddle the country’s north-eastern border with Turkey.

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Public consultation ‘overwhelmingly’ supports fuel efficiency standard for cars, Labor says

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Chris Bowen says the standard is needed to improve access to cleaner, cheaper-to-run cars in Australia

The Albanese government’s promise to introduce a fuel efficiency standard for cars has been “overwhelmingly” supported by a public consultation process, Labor says.

Labor will now complete an impact analysis and release details of its preferred model for a standard “before the end of this year”.

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Amazon’s emissions ‘doubled’ under first half of Bolsonaro presidency

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New study published in Nature says period was as destructive as record 2016 El Niño drought and heatwave

The first half of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency was so destructive for the Amazon that it was comparable to the record 2016 El Niño drought and heatwave in terms of carbon emissions, according to scientists.

Annual emissions from the world’s largest rainforest roughly doubled in 2019 and 2020, compared with the 2010 to 2018 average, according to a new study published in Nature, as swaths of forest were deliberately cleared and burned for cattle ranching and farming during the first two years of the far-right leader’s time in office.

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Massive economic pain for Australia if temperature rises exceed 2C, intergenerational report predicts

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Report says hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of work hours in productivity are at risk due to hotter conditions

Success in limiting global warming will spare Australia a sharp fall in economic activity but would see coal exports fall to a trickle by 2063 under a low-emissions scenario, according to the government’s intergenerational report.

The report, to be released in full on Thursday, will provide much greater detail on the range of impacts and their scale in a warming world than the five previous intergenerational reports.

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Climate crisis made spate of Canada wildfires twice as likely, scientists find

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Burning of fossil fuels made fires at least twice as likely, and the fire-prone weather at least 20% more intense, study shows

The conditions that caused Canada’s extreme spate of wildfires this year, which resulted in parts of the US and Canada to be blanketed in toxic smoke, were made at least twice as likely due to the human-caused climate crisis, scientists have found.

The 2023 Canadian wildfire season has been the largest, and most devastating, on record, with nearly 14m hectares (34m acres) burned, an area larger than Greece. The extent of these fires, more than double the size of the previous record, caused more than a dozen fatalities and thousands of evacuations, and sent a plume of smoke that unfurled as far as Norway and, for a time in June, turned the sky above New York City orange.

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Activists hit with restraining orders lawyer claims will stop them speaking out about Woodside

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Fossil fuel company denies orders granted after incident at CEO’s home are intended to prevent campaigners from speaking out

Four activists have been hit with violence restraining orders that their lawyer says prevents them from making any public reference to Woodside’s CEO and effectively stops them from speaking out about the company.

The interim court orders were issued to activists charged in relation to an incident at the home of Meg O’Neill and “were sought to protect Ms O’Neill’s family’s safety”, a Woodside spokesperson confirmed.

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Investment in new Australian wind and solar farms stalls amid ‘raft of barriers’, report finds

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First half of year had slowest pace of final approvals in Clean Energy Council’s six years of tracking, but backing for power storage was more promising

Investment in new wind and solar farms has all but stalled with developers facing a “raft of barriers” despite strong political support, the Clean Energy Council said in its latest quarterly report.

The first half of 2023 produced the slowest pace of final investment approvals in the council’s six years of data tracking. Just four generation projects accounting for 348 megawatts – or roughly the size of a single coal-fired power station unit – secured financial commitment in the June quarter.

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Zero-degree line at record height above Switzerland as heat and fire hit Europe

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Weather ballon climbs to 5,300 metres before temperature falls to 0C amid late summer heatwave

A Swiss weather balloon had to climb to an unprecedented 5,300 metres (17,400ft) before the temperature fell to 0C (32F), meteorologists have said, as a late summer heatwave and wildfires continue to pummel swathes of continental Europe.

A man was found dead in a blaze raging north of Athens on Monday as the Greek government warned of an “extreme” risk of fire across the country, while more than half of mainland France was placed under an amber heat alert.

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