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Reports predict global heating will bring catastrophes and that air conditioning market could grow by 41%
The world is on track for disastrous global heating – but this will create profits for some air conditioning companies, according to forecasts by leading Wall Street financial institutions.
Recent reports by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and the Institute of International Finance all make clear the finance sector considers the Paris climate agreement limiting global temperatures, signed a decade ago by nearly 200 nations, is effectively dead and investors should plan accordingly.
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Traditional methods benefit hundreds of species but as new agricultural techniques take over, the distinctive haystacks mark a vanishing way of life
Golden haystacks shaped like teardrops have been a symbol of rural life in Romania for hundreds of years. The 3-metre-high (10ft) stacks are the culmination of days of hard work by families, from children up to grandparents, in the height of summer.
Together they cut waist-high grass, leave it to dry in the hot sun and stack it up to be stored over the winter, combing the hay downwards to protect it from harsh winds, heavy rain and snow. Throughout winter, clumps of it are removed from the haystacks and fed to livestock.
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Hurricane Helene proved a hard truth: a freezer of seeds is the literal version of putting all your eggs in one basket
About a month after Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina last fall, Rodger Winn and I met in an Asheville, North Carolina, supermarket parking lot. He’d driven two hours from Little Mountain, South Carolina, where the passing storm had also left its destructive mark.
“When the power finally came back on,” Winn said, “two of my freezers didn’t work.” Winn was worried not about spoiled food inside, but his seed collection. On that autumn day, in an act of forced downsizing and seed philanthropy, Winn handed over two boxes filled with seeds. He wanted me, as founder of the non-profit Utopian Seed Project, to share the seeds with farmers across the region. The boxes contained a trove of Appalachian varieties: speckled field peas, white mountain half-runner beans, purple-podded bush beans and lots of butterbeans.
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Appeal court finds in favour of anglers who said plans to clean up river were so vague as to be totally ineffectual
A group of anglers trying to restore the ecosystem of a river have seen off a challenge by the environment secretary, Steve Reed, who claimed that cleaning up the waterway was administratively unworkable.
Reed pursued an appeal against a group of anglers from North Yorkshire, who had won a legal case arguing that the government and the Environment Agency’s plans to clean up the Upper Costa Beck, a former trout stream devastated by sewage pollution and runoff, were so vague they were ineffectual.
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Species-rich plot can produce cooling effect 4C greater than single-species plot
Woodland with lots of different kinds of trees can do a good job of buffering heatwaves and extreme cold. Now a new study demonstrates that increasing the mix of species can help to mitigate climate extremes.
Florian Schnabel, from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig, and colleagues measured forest temperatures over a six-year period at the world’s largest tree diversity experiment in Xingangshan, in subtropical China. Their results, published in Ecology Letters, show that species-rich plots provided the greatest cooling effect during summer, with cooling more than 4C greater in an experimental plot with 24 species compared with a single-species plot. Diverse plots also maintained more warmth under the tree canopy on cold nights and during winter.
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Bridport, Dorset: The common fern’s name was inspired by another phase of its life cycle, when fronds die off and spindly threads of stem remain in luxuriant, wiry tufts
The modest clumps of fern clustering on the wall have a strangely reptilian appearance. Their short, slightly wavy green fronds with blackish central stems seem frozen in mid-writhe, as if they are the tails of lizards disappearing into cracks.
Maidenhair spleenwort is one of the commonest small ferns. It grows in stony places almost worldwide, with many subspecies and hybrids. The type found most often in the UK thrives on limestone (Asplenium trichomanes subspecies quadrivalens). It’s widespread in towns, where the damp, gritty, lime-based mortar of old buildings provides an ideal habitat similar to mountain scree. Shopping in Bridport, I notice it growing on the boundary of a public car park.
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If Peter Dutton needs to court the crossbench to form minority government after the election, he would risk putting his Coalition partner offside on climate and environment policy
If the Coalition wins the election, it will face a concerted push from its junior partner, the Nationals, to weaken and even abandon climate initiatives and promote coal as an interim measure in the Coalition’s nuclear power plan.
That would put Peter Dutton and the Liberals between a rock and a hard place should he seek to form a minority government, given that might require the support of environmentally minded crossbenchers.
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Since February we’ve gone in search of the invertebrate of the year. Now it’s your chance to choose
Invertebrates – animals without spines – make up the vast majority of life on Earth. The Guardian’s invertebrate of the year contest celebrates the unsung heroes of the planet. Readers have nominated thousands of amazing animals, we’ve chosen a shortlist of 10, and now you can vote for your favourite.
1. The tongue-biting louse burrows in through a fish’s gills, clings to its tongue and eats what the fish eats.
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A 19th-century zoologist found the ‘little salt dweller’, which could be a portal to the past – if only we could locate it again
Last February, with colleagues Gert and Philipp and my daughter Francesca, I made the long journey to an unremarkable city called Río Cuarto, east of the Argentinian Andes. We went in search of a worm of unusual distinction.
Why a worm? As humans, we naturally love the animals that are most familiar. But from a zoologist’s point of view, the vertebrates, from mammals and birds to frogs and fish, can be seen as variations on a single theme. We all have a head at one end (with skull, eyes and jaws); in the middle, a couple of pairs of limbs (a goldfish’s fins, or your arms and legs); and, holding all this together, a backbone ending in a tail.
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Scientists say they are ingesting more microplastics in Mediterranean as the plankton they feed on struggle to survive in warming waters
As the Latin name suggests, Sardina pilchardus can be called a sardine or a pilchard when it is tinned or offered on a fishmonger’s slab. One common definition is that if it is longer than 15cm it is called a pilchard and if smaller, a sardine.
However, when pilchards fell out of favour with consumers, 15cm pilchards were rebranded as Cornish sardines and sales picked up again. To add to the confusion, other small silver fish are often passed off as sardines.
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