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European scientists warn of consequences for weather patterns, the global climate and marine life
Temperatures on the ocean surface have hit a record high, raising fears of another burst of extreme heat this summer.
On 21 June, temperatures outside the polar regions exceeded the extraordinary highs observed at the same time in 2023 and 2024, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Wednesday.
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Despite contamination at Malkins Bank in Cheshire, it is deemed suitable for golf … and now a children’s play area
One morning in Sandbach, a neighbour appeared at Graham Warner’s door with a large folder: a delivery, she said, from an unidentified source.
“I think you’ll find this very interesting. Happy reading,” she said.
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Cumbria police and National Trust appeal for information after young tree taken from Wray parkland and castle
A sapling taken from the Sycamore Gap tree has been stolen from the grounds of a castle just months after it was planted.
The Sycamore Gap tree, on Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, was one of the UK’s best-known and most loved trees. It was criminally felled for no apparent reason on a stormy night in September 2023.
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Past and present leaders of wealthy nations such as UK and Germany have argued their actions are insignificant
On first hearing, it is a position that sounds reasonable. “When our share of global emissions is less than 1%,” Rishi Sunak argued when he was the UK prime minister in 2023, “how can it be right that British citizens are now being told to sacrifice even more than others?”
Sunak is not the only world leader to have cited such figures while delaying cuts to pollution. In 2019, Scott Morrison, Australia’s then prime minister, used his country’s 1.3% of global emissions to reject any suggestion Australia was not “doing our bit” on climate breakdown. In July, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, pointed to his country’s 2% share of global emissions while supporting loopholes in European climate targets. A few months later the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, followed suit, flagging the EU’s 6% share.
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The class politics of extreme heat are very real and very dangerous – but that doesn’t stop the billionaire press from peddling its agenda
Every time you think the idiocy has hit rock bottom, it discovers a new level. It turns out there’s an even deeper hole you can dig for yourself than climate-science denial: heat-stress denial. Across the billionaire press last week, columnists and leader writers minimised the health impacts of the heatwave, particularly in schools. Expect more of this next week, when temperatures are forecast to soar again.
An editorial in the Telegraph (which represents the newspaper’s view) titled “Hot weather alarmism treats the public like children” maintained that “unlike in the seventies, when people were largely trusted to look after themselves, officialdom now feels the need to lecture the public about the risks of hot weather at every opportunity”. Extreme heat warnings are issued and weather maps are “painted in an alarming red”. Outrageous! Instead of issuing warnings, the government should just trust people to “take the appropriate precautions”. We should all “learn to live” with it. Quite right too: whatever happened to the bulldog spirit of ignorance and needless death? Cricket, warm beer, excess mortality: these are the markers of national character.
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Charmouth, Dorset: On a busy beach day, I find bright green gutweed thriving by the river mouth. It’s resilient – and loves the nutrients found in sewage
Charmouth beach is always busy. Even on grey and stormy winter days, walkers and their dogs patrol the hissing waves, and fossil hunters pick over rubble newly fallen from the black cliffs.
With summer here and school holidays approaching, the sands are strewn with visitors and the car park packed with glittering windscreens. It’s a lovely place to swim, as long as you heed the council signs warning of E coli and keep away from the River Char and its immediate outflow, which is often contaminated.
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Study reveals extreme heat causes sharp drop with knock-on effect for pollination of food crops in following years
We know heatwaves have serious health consequences for humans, but what about other species? A study has shown they severely diminish bees’ fertility, with significant implications for the pollination of food crops in the following years.
Prof James Gilbert of the University of Hull his and colleagues simulated a three-day UK heatwave in the lab and measured its effect on solitary red mason bees, compared with those kept under control conditions of an ordinary summer.
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After a recent study found New Orleans is at a ‘point of no return’ amid the climate crisis, some locals say they will ‘only leave if forced to’. But what would it take to stay?
When a study in May concluded that New Orleans has hit a “point of no return” due to the climate crisis that will require people to eventually retreat from their storied yet ultimately doomed city, the local reaction was swift and fiery.
The onward march of rising seas around a sinking city was unsettling, but the study is “more focused on generating publicity and clickbait headlines” than coming up with solutions, said Helena Moreno, New Orleans’ mayor. There is flooding in Miami, and wildfires and earthquakes near San Fransisco, Moreno pointed out, “yet no serious movement exists to declare those cities lost causes”.
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The elephant seal has been crushing fences, blocking traffic and bashing into parked cars, in what experts say is play-fighting behaviour
Bollards, traffic cones, fences and LandCruisers stand little chance against a one-tonne giant known as Neil the seal, now a local legend in southern Tasmania.
Neil – a five-year-old elephant seal – has once again taken up residence in Tasmanian towns. He’s bypassing barricades, crushing fences, lying on roads and bashing into at least one parked car.
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For months I’ve been trying to receive my FIT payment, which should be more than £1,000
I moved into my new house 14 months ago, and soon afterwards applied toScottishPower, with whom the solar panels are registered for a feed-in tariff (Fit), for transfer of ownership of the panels and the tariff.
After many emails back and forth, I got a response saying they had all the information required.
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