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Defenders say AI can do good to fight the climate crisis. But spiralling energy and water costs leave experts worried
During a golden sunset in Memphis in May, Sharon Wilson pointed a thermal imaging camera at Elon Musk’s flagship datacentre to reveal a planetary threat her eyes could not. Free from pollution controls, the gas-fired turbines that power the world’s biggest AI supercomputer were pumping invisible fumes into the Tennessee sky.
“It was jaw-dropping,” said Wilson, a former oil and gas worker from Texas who has documented methane releases for more than a decade and estimates xAI’s Colossus datacentre was spewing more of the planet-heating gas than a large power plant. “Just an unbelievable amount of pollution.”
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Comins Coch, Ceredigion: The winds have died down, so I head out on an eerily still morning among frozen fallen leaves and emerging catkins
The bitter wind from the east rattles around the house, upturning plant pots and causing a number of worryingly loud crashes in the gathering dusk. The gale peaks around dawn, then blows itself out to leave an uncannily still, clear morning.
In the lane, a deeply eroded trackway of indeterminate age, a fresh rash of fallen branches marks the passage of the storm, while a pair of jays dispute hoarsely in the fragment of woodland beside the stream.
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Bird organisations say more research on the species needed to control impact on other wildlife
In the past 20 years, the soundscape in the ancient wild, rolling landscape of Richmond Park has been transformed. Once you would have heard the chirrup of the stonechat, the chirp of the greater spotted woodpecker or the song of the skylark. Today, the auditory power of one bird dominates.
The bright green ring-necked parakeet increased 25-fold from 1994-2023 in the UK. They are still mainly based in the skies, parks, and woodlands around London and suburban areas in the south east, but in recent years they have made their way to northern cities including Manchester and Newcastle.
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London predicted to be the first UK city to go diesel-free, largely because of the ultra-low emission zone
Battery electric cars are poised to overtake diesels on Great Britain’s roads by 2030, according to analysis that suggests London will be the first UK city to go diesel-free.
The number of diesel cars on Great Britain’s roads in June had fallen to 9.9m in June last year, 21% below its peak of 12.4m vehicles, according to analysis by New AutoMotive, a thinktank focused on the transition to electric cars. Electric car sales are still growing rapidly, albeit more slowly than manufacturers had expected.
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Other firms are taking advantage of Tesla’s sales slump, while technological advances mean that glitches are being left in the rear-view mirror
In another era, before Elon Musk bought Twitter, changed its name to X to mark the spot of its descent into barbarism, honed Grok, a generator of far-right propaganda, swung behind Donald Trump and made what appeared to be a Nazi salute, I already knew he was a wrong ’un. The year was 2019, and I was test-driving a Tesla; while I was ambling off the forecourt, the PR told me jauntily that the windscreen was made of a material that would protect the driver from biohazards. I hit the brakes. “You what? What kind of biohazard? Like, a war?” She misconstrued me, thinking I intended to go and find some toxic waste site to see if it worked, and said: “I’m not sure it’s operational in the press fleet.”
That wasn’t my question: rather, what kind of a world was Tesla preparing for? One so unstable that an average (though affluent) private citizen would do well to prepare for a chemical weapons attack? What model of consumption was this, that the rich used their wealth to prepare for the mayhem their resource-capture would unleash, while the less-rich prepared slightly less well? Was Musk trying to bring to market the apocalypse planning that elites had already embarked on? Because if he was, then it was possible that he was not a great guy. And that turned out to be correct.
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Mean temperature for year was 10.09C, surpassing 2022 record, and 1,648.5 hours of sunshine were recorded
2025 was the UK’s warmest and sunniest year on record, the Met Office has confirmed.
The UK’s three hottest years on record have now all been in this decade, which meteorologists say is proof of a rapidly changing climate. All of the top 10 warmest years have happened in the past two decades.
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Tebay, Cumbria: Small farms like ours contribute to society, but we need help to survive. A huge cloud has lifted over our future
Just before Christmas I attended a farmers’ conference near Penrith, which included a presentation on the inheritance tax rules for agricultural land. An accountant worked through an example of a typical hill farm like ours: the bill worked out as £59,000 every year for 10 years.
Between the farm and our off‑farm jobs, we can’t generate that kind of profit, so this terrified me – we didn’t know what would happen to the farm if we had to pay that bill. We sought advice from a solicitor, but, thank goodness, there was a surprise announcement from the government on 23 December that the threshold on land and assets was raised from £1m to £2.5m.
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Exclusive: data reveals hundreds of UK nests have been raided in the past decade amid growing appetite to own prized birds for racing and breeding
In the echoing exhibition halls of Abu Dhabi’s International Hunting and Equestrian Exhibition, hundreds of falcons sit on perches under bright lights. Decorated hoods fit snugly over their heads, blocking their vision to keep them calm.
In a small glass room marked Elite Falcons Hall, four young birds belonging to an undisclosed Emirati sheikh are displayed like expensive jewels. Entry to the room, with its polished glass, controlled lighting and plush seating, is restricted to authorised visitors only.
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A helpless baby elephant has won the Thai public’s sympathy but her case has shed light on the pressures facing herds across Asia
Khao Tom, a two-month-old elephant, plays with a wildlife officer, nudging his face and curling her trunk around his wrist. When she lifts her trunk in the air, signalling that she is hungry, the team at the rescue centre seems relieved – she has not been eating well. A vet prepares a pint-sized bottle of formula, which she gulps down impatiently.
Khao Tom has been in the care of Thailand’s national parks and wildlife department since September, when rangers rescued her from a farming area inside Lam Khlong Ngu national park. Born with a congenital disorder affecting her knees, she struggled to keep up with the herd. Within days of her birth, her mother had moved on without her.
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The monsoon season is crucial for agriculture, making up 80% of annual rainfall, but also extremely destructive
January brings torrential rain to south-east Asia – more than 250mm fell in just two days in Singapore last year. This is because of the monsoon, a pattern of wind and rainfall, the name of which stems from the Arabic word for “season”.
The monsoon is sometimes described in terms of a sea breeze, in which the wind reverses direction in the morning and evening as the relative temperature of land and sea change, blowing out to sea at first and then inland as the land cools.
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