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UK June heat record could be broken for the second consecutive day
Harriet Richards
Assistant environment editor
Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, warned that “Europe’s savage heatwave has the fingerprints of the climate crisis all over it” and is “the latest price to pay for fossil fuel pollution baking our planet.”
“Schools closing, the vulnerable dying, economies sweating: this is what the climate crisis looks like in practice, and it’s just getting started.”
“Until humanity stops burning colossal amounts of coal, oil and gas, extreme heat will keep getting worse, and other climate impacts – from mega-droughts, floods, wildfires and storms – will keep hammering every economy and population harder each year.
With billions of households, businesses and all economies still feeling the heat of the latest fossil fuel cost chaos, and thousands dying in a single day in some regions as temperatures soar, stronger climate actions can’t wait.
The solutions are equally clear: a faster shift to renewables – which are now much cheaper than fossil fuels – as well as protecting forests and boosting climate resilience. Many countries need support to embrace clean energy and protect their peoples. There’s no time to lose.”
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Readers remember the Sherwood Forest tree that has failed to produce leaves for the first time in 1,000 years
After hundreds of years inspiring wonder in Sherwood Forest, the Major oak has died. We asked readers to share their memories of one of the UK’s most recognisable natural landmarks, said to have offered a sanctuary for Robin Hood, and the response was overwhelming, with many sharing heartfelt stories of childhood adventures.
Joanna de Graaf from Leicestershire wrote: “I grew up in Nottingham and we visited Sherwood Forest quite often as a family. I can remember being so excited to actually be inside the Major oak where Robin Hood and his merry men had hidden (and, for a little girl in the 1960s, Maid Marian too).
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Plan warns climate crisis will lead to food price shocks and shortages but farmers say it fails to adequately fund response
The climate crisis will lead to food price shocks and shortages, the government has warned in its new plan for British farming.
But farmers criticised the plan, which outlines for the first time the government’s vision for the long-term direction of farming, for failing to adequately fund a response to this threat to the UK’s food security.
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The Marches, Shropshire: Scarlet tiger moths are on the wing at our allotment, taking advantage of the sunny days – and our human activity
The jackdaw takes three hops and is airborne, swinging into a warm dry wind, back over the fence to the northern side of the plateau. Jackdaws and rooks lift from careful stepping into the wind to fly and call, mingling with singing voices from the school nearby. The corvids are shadowing the sheep, Soay/Hebridean cross breeds that graze the Old Oswestry hillfort or Hen Ddinas (Old City in Welsh). Black birds, black sheep, green grass.
This scene echoes through a thousand years of occupation until the Roman conquest on this high space ringed with earthwork ramparts. The sheep are the closest to those farmed by the iron age tribal people of the Cornovii – the people of the horn. Impressive and tough, these horned black sheep step out of history with the same confidence in their place here as the birds.
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Analysis shows cars in Europe have grown longer, taller and wider every year since 2000
Cars have grown 1.2cm longer, 0.5cm taller and 0.5cm wider each year on average since 2000, analysis of new vehicles sold in Europe has found, in what green groups call “relentless carspreading”.
The increase in size, which leaves people more likely to be killed in a crash and increases emissions that hurt lungs and heat the planet, has progressed at a roughly steady rate for two and half decades even as family sizes have fallen, the campaign group Transport & Environment (T&E) found.
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Wildlife photographer Mohammed Almuntasir had no idea what he had found until scientists started to get in touch
When wildlife photographer Mohammed Almuntasir uploaded 18 seconds of footage to YouTube, he thought little more about the small, pale cat seen digging a hollow in the sand in the remote dunes of south-west Libya.
The video, however, posted in 2017, turned out to be the first material evidence that the sand cat (Felis margarita), the world’s only felid adapted to true desert conditions, existed in the country.
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Matriarchal groups in east and west exhibit distinct click patterns, used to form social structures
From “Howdy” to “G’day”, English – like other languages – is rich in dialects. Now researchers have found sperm whales on different sides of the Mediterranean show similar variations in their vocalisations.
Sperm whales communicate vocally using sequences of short clicks called codas. However, the rhythmic pattern of these clicks, known as the dialect, can differ between different matriarchal groups.
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A blooming new wave of musical theatre is exploring the plight of the planet with a playful and hopeful approach
Earth is a single woman with a lot to give; Humanity is a charismatic bad boy who turns out to be an inveterate taker. Their toxic relationship is told in Hot Mess, a musical created by Jack Godfrey and Ellie Coote, which works both as an eccentric romcom with broad commercial appeal and a serious analogy for our abuse of the once fecund, now depleted planet. A hot ticket at the Edinburgh fringe last summer and now on in London, it is at the vanguard of a newly blooming genre of musicals about the environmental crisis.
The RSC’s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind uses exuberant song and dance for the true story of a teenager who builds a wind turbine from an old bicycle in drought-ridden Malawi. Bryony Kimmings’ Bog Witch is a one-woman show with music and standup about the plight of the planet, while in New York the folk-pop musical Dear Everything was a response to climate emergency co-written by V (formerly Eve Ensler) and narrated by Jane Fonda. Meanwhile, in the West End hit Hadestown, hell is strewn with empty oil drums.
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Researchers assessed likelihood gas was produced during creation of Alps, Pyrenees and Baetic mountains
Hydrogen gas is anticipated to play a central role in phasing out fossil fuels, particularly in industries that are proving more challenging to decarbonise, such as chemical production, shipping and steelmaking. But producing hydrogen synthetically is energy intensive and costly. In order for the hydrogen economy to take off, we need to find reliable natural sources of this gas. Could it be hidden in the mountains?
Researchers used plate tectonic simulations to investigate the Pyrenees, Alps and Baetic mountain ranges to assess if their mountain-building processes were likely to have resulted in hydrogen being produced and stored. Their findings, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, showed that the Alps and Pyrenees could be strong natural hydrogen exploration sites.
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Photographer Shane Hynan explores the tension between the central role peat bogs play in Irish life and their wider environmental impact
“You can read Ireland’s history in the boglands. They hold millennia in their layers,” says photographer Shane Hynan of his project, Beofhód (meaningBeneath in English).
The boglands, known as portachs in Irish, cover roughly 1.2m to 1.5m hectares or about 14% to 17% of the country’s total land area. The raised bogs of the Irish Midlands are made of peat that forms at a rate of 1mm a year (0.04in) in low-lying, poorly drained basins or former lakes. As the historical geographer Kevin Whelan observes in the Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape, “the bog has been etched as deeply into the human as into the physical record in Ireland – to an extent unrivalled elsewhere.”
Eddie and Con footing turf for domestic use, Knockirr Bog, County Kildare, 2022.
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