Nearly 300,000 people forced to flee after monsoon rains, which have killed 42 people in India and Bangladesh
Nearly 300,000 Bangladeshis are taking refuge in emergency shelters from floods that inundated vast areas of the country, disaster officials said.
The floods were triggered by heavy monsoon rains and have killed at least 42 people in Bangladesh and India since the start of the week, many in landslides.
Continue reading...Charity is considering removing some of the water and there is also concern over the sediment on the canal floor
When sodium cyanide leaked into a Walsall canal this month, leading to major incident being declared and miles of the waterway closed off, the Canal & River Trust was working in uncharted territory.
The charity is used to fighting pollution in the waterways that crisscross the country, but this type of chemical – and the extreme risk to public health that came with it – was not something it had tackled before.
Continue reading...Stings needing medical attention surge by 41% as rising sea temperatures due to the climate crisis boost reproduction
Costa Brava resorts in Spain’s north-east are struggling to cope with an influx of jellyfish as rising sea temperatures facilitate reproduction and drive species farther north.
Between May and August almost 7,500 people on the Catalan coast sought medical attention for jellyfish stings – a 41% increase on last year. The stings are painful and can have unpleasant consequences for anyone with compromised immunity.
Continue reading...US specialist on invasive species says the densities of the destructive pest are approaching what he has seen in Texas
Parts of Queensland have as many fire ants as Texas – a hotbed of the uncontrolled infestation that costs the US billions of dollars each year, an expert has warned
Dr Robert Puckett is an American specialist on invasive ant species and he’s followed Australia’s efforts to eradicate fire ants since they were discovered in Brisbane 23 years ago.
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Continue reading...New male baby of near-threatened species born at Werribee open range zoo to be named in public competition in coming weeks
A very large bundle of joy was quietly delivered to a Melbourne zoo last Sunday as a southern white rhino gave birth to a male calf.
Mother Kipenzi, 11, and father Kifaru, 15, welcomed their 60kg baby into the world in the early hours of 18 August, Werribee open range zoo announced.
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Continue reading...Type of microplastics used in skin exfoliators and banned in UK and US found in 45% of Indian products studied
India should consider a ban on microbeads in personal care products, in line with many other countries in the world, say researchers.
Microbeads are a type of microplastic used in cosmetic products to exfoliate the skin. After a public uproar when the plastics were highlighted in Europe a decade ago, they were banned in the Netherlands in 2014, with many other countries following, including the US in 2015 and the UK in 2018.
Continue reading...August should mean peak snow depth, Jindabyne worker says, but early blast of spring threatens ‘catastrophic’ premature end to season
Australia’s snow season has begun to melt away early as unseasonable warmth cuts snowfalls to almost half the average for this time of year, experts say.
A global-heating fuelled early blast of spring weather means the season may have peaked early, with snow fields melted by warm temperatures and washed away by showers.
Continue reading...Schools and university shut down in Tripura state after persistent heavy rain, and situation expected to worsen
Incessant rain across Tripura, a state in north-east India, has created what has been described as the state’s worst flood situation in the last three decades. Persistent heavy rain from Monday to Wednesday resulted in several rivers exceeding danger and extreme danger marks, leading to widespread flooding that has caused the deaths of 10 people as well as displacing more than 34,000.
The southern Tripura districts had the worst of the floods and the 34,000 displaced people were being sheltered in the north of the region. There were 24-hour rainfall totals on Wednesday of 375.8mm recorded in Bagafa and 324.4mm in Belonia. The flooding and heavy rain led schools to shut down on Wednesday and Thursday, while Tripura University suspended all regular classes on Wednesday. The heavy rain was caused by a low pressure system situated over Bangladesh that is slowly moving westwards into north-east India. The situation is therefore only expected to worsen, with a further 100-150mm falling through Thursday and Friday as rivers continue to remain at breaking point.
Continue reading...Campaigners denounce ‘pure slaughter’, which could threaten survival of entire Scandinavian population
More than 150 brown bears have been killed in the opening days of Sweden’s annual bear hunt, as controversy mounts over what conservationists have called “pure slaughter”.
The Swedish government issued 486 licences to shoot bears in this year’s hunt, equivalent to about 20% of the remaining brown bear population. This follows a record-breaking cull of 722 bears last year. By Thursday afternoon – the second day of the hunt – 152 bears had already been shot, according to Sweden’s Environmental Protection Agency.
Continue reading...Firm says it had no idea proposed test site on Lib Dem peer’s land included part of Strathmore peatlands in Flow Country
A British arms company has abandoned plans to detonate fragmentation bombs in the middle of the Flow Country world heritage site, the Guardian can reveal.
The company, Overwatch, asked the Civil Aviation Authority this month for permission to carry out “live fire testing” of anti-personnel bombs dropped by drones on to land owned by the Liberal Democrat peer John Thurso.
Continue reading...Operation to free young animal from ropes and buoys conducted ‘very carefully’
A humpback whale has been freed after being entangled in ropes in Sydney Harbour.
Jessica Fox, the second vice-president of volunteer organisation Orrca, confirmed the rescue late on Friday morning.
Continue reading...Oil firms, petrostates, airlines and carmakers ‘doubling down’ on sector that is popular with young people
Oil companies, petrostates, airlines and carmakers are among the big polluters bombarding the esports industry with adverts, a study has found.
Esports, short for electronic sports, are competitive video games watched by spectators, with multiplayer games such as League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients 2 attracting peak viewer figures in the millions.
Continue reading...Pilot scheme in Amazon communities of central Peru aims to help people choose a more sustainable way of living
“At the beginning, there was a lot of fear and disbelief,” said Ketty Marcelo. “There was a perception from the communities that this was another scam, that it was only looking to steal information or our integrity.”
Indigenous communities in the Amazon have grown weary of people coming in from outside with plans that could mean them losing their land or way of life. When a team from Cool Earth, a climate action NGO, came to the Amazon communities of central Peru in October 2022, local people were hesitant. “These fears caused some families not to participate,” Marcelo said. “And we, as an organisation, were afraid this would be another project that would seek to impose activities without respecting the autonomy of the communities.”
Continue reading...August temperature records threaten to break as Oodnadatta in South Australia braces for 38C and BoM forecasts above 30C in Brisbane next week
Australia is on track to face its hottest August on record as a global heating-fuelled “heat engine” brings spring and summer warmth to Australia’s winter, experts forecast.
Weatherzone meteorologist Ben Domensino said the unseasonably warm weather was coming from a “heat engine” in Australia’s red centre, where clear skies in the coming week would drive maximum temperatures towards 40C, more than 10C above average, in northern SA, southern NT, and western NSW.
Continue reading...A quarter of all incidents, such as destruction of dams, pipelines and treatment plants, seen in Gaza Strip and West Bank
Israeli attacks on Palestinian water supplies in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip accounted for a quarter of all water-related violence in 2023, as armed conflicts over dwindling resources surged globally, according to new research.
Almost 350 water conflicts were documented worldwide in 2023, a 50% rise on 2022, which was also a record year, according to the Pacific Institute, a California-based non partisan thinktank tracking water violence. The violence included attacks on dams, pipelines, wells, treatment plants and workers, as well as public unrest and disputes over access to water, and the use of water as a weapon of war.
Continue reading...Permits for coal-fired power plants drop by 83% despite leading world in construction as focus turns to renewables
Coal-fired power is still enjoying a construction boom in China, but a marked slowdown in the permitting of future plants has given experts hope that the world’s biggest emitter may be turning a corner.
China led the world in the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the first half of 2024, with work beginning on more than 41GW of new generation capacity, data published on Thursday showed.
Continue reading...Woodland Trust’s competition comes as charity campaigns for more robust legal protection for precious trees
An oak tree shaped like an elephant and the oak with the widest girth in the UK have been shortlisted for the annual Tree of the Year competition.
The Woodland Trust runs the annual competition to raise awareness of the UK’s ancient and at-risk trees.
Marton oak, Cheshire
Sessile oak (quercus petraea) / Approximate age: 1,200 years / Girth: 14.02 metres.
Bowthorpe oak, Lincolnshire
English oak (quercus robur) / Estimated age: 1000 years / Girth: 13.38 metres.
Countries in south most at risk, with rise likely to outstrip fall in cold-related deaths if global heating hits 3C or 4C
Heat deaths in Europe could triple by the end of the century, with the numbers rising disproportionately in southern European countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain, a study has found.
Cold kills more people than heat in Europe, and some have argued that climate change will benefit society by reducing those deaths. But the study, published in the Lancet Public Health, found that the death toll would respond slowly to warming weather and may even rise through people growing older and more vulnerable to dangerous temperatures.
Continue reading...England’s controversial eradication scheme may have caused higher rates of disease in surrounding areas, research shows
England’s controversial badger cull may have increased the risk of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) among herds in neighbouring areas, according to new research.
Researchers at the University of Oxford found that although badger culling reduced incidences of tuberculosis in the areas where it took place, in neighbouring areas the risk of the disease in cattle increased by almost a third.
Continue reading...Record sea temperatures in the Mediterranean contributed to waterspout that hit Bayesian
Record temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea this summer contributed to the freak storm that sank a superyacht off the coast of Sicily, with similar extreme events expected to increase in frequency and intensity as the climate crisis tightens its grip, Italian scientists have said.
One person is confirmed to have died and rescuers are searching for six missing people, including the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, after the 56-metre Bayesian capsized in the early hours of Monday.
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