US energy industry is putting profits over people, advocates say of remarks made at CERAWeek in Texas
At a major oil and gas conference in Texas this week, companies publicly retreated from their flashy climate pledges of years past, redoubling their commitment to planet-warming fossil fuels.
The withdrawals illustrate the companies’ allegiance not to ordinary Americans, but to their shareholders and the climate-skeptical Trump administration, advocates said.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
03/12/2025 - 09:00
As Scottish energy firms race to meet challenges of storing power, critics fear plans will affect delicate hydrology of loch
Brian Shaw stood at the edge of Loch Ness and pointed to a band of glistening pebbles and damp sand skirting the shore. It seemed as if the tide had gone out.
Overnight, Foyers, a small pumped-storage power station, had recharged itself, drawing up millions of litres of water into a reservoir high up on a hill behind it, ready for release through its turbines to boost the UK’s electricity supply. That led to the surface of Loch Ness, the largest body of freshwater in the UK, falling by 14cm in a matter of hours.
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03/12/2025 - 06:00
The US president is making energy deals with Japan and Ukraine, and in Africa has even touted resurrecting coal
Donald Trump’s repeated mantra of “drill, baby, drill” demands that more oil and gas be extracted in the United States, but the president has set his sights on an even broader goal: keeping the world hooked on planet-heating fossil fuels for as long as possible.
In deals being formulated with countries such as Japan and Ukraine, Trump is using US leverage in tariffs and military aid to bolster the flow of oil and gas around the world. In Africa, his administration has even touted the resurrection of coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, to bring energy to the continent.
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03/12/2025 - 04:00
Injecting pollutants into the atmosphere to reflect the sun would be extremely dangerous, but the UK is funding field trials
Some years ago in the pages of the Guardian, we sounded the alarm about the increasing attention being paid to solar geoengineering – a barking mad scheme to cancel global heating by putting pollutants in the atmosphere that dim the sun by reflecting some sunlight back to space.
In one widely touted proposition, fleets of aircraft would continually inject sulphur compounds into the upper atmosphere, simulating the effects of a massive array of volcanoes erupting continuously. In essence, we have broken the climate by releasing gigatonnes of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide, and solar geoengineering proposes to “fix” it by breaking a very different part of the climate system.
Raymond T Pierrehumbert FRS is professor of planetary physics at the University of Oxford. He is an author of the 2015 US National Academy of Sciences report on climate intervention
Michael E Mann ForMemRS is presidential distinguished professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis
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03/12/2025 - 02:00
Campaigners say introduction of feasibility test in England and Wales over bathing status is ‘snub to communities’
Rivers are unlikely to be granted the protections of bathing water status under the government’s changes to the system, campaigners have said.
River activists have reacted with fury as details of the reforms were revealed on Wednesday.
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03/12/2025 - 00:38
If you don’t believe the scientists, will you believe the insurance companies?
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03/11/2025 - 21:44
My homeplace has experienced four natural disasters in eight years. But I’d never seen the like of this bird before, vibrantly green and startlingly beautiful
We were midway through our cyclone preparation when my mother broke her leg. She stepped into her bedroom to retrieve something, tripped and fell, and that was that. My mother is 74 and hardy, so this sudden break took us by surprise. Once I got her home, leg in brace, we’d lost significant time, and my household was down to one functional human: me.
This is the fourth natural disaster I’ve experienced in the last eight years. One-in-100-year floods (2017), unprecedented bushfires (2019), one-in-1,000-year floods (2022) and now Cyclone Alfred. Cyclones are a new threat. I’ve lived in my homeplace, in northern New South Wales, for almost 50 years and we’ve never had a cyclone cross land in our vicinity. We were, as they say, in uncharted waters.
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03/11/2025 - 21:36
Research shows apex predators are increasing in numbers and excreting important nutrients into Top End waterways
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The growing saltwater crocodile population in the Northern Territory has led to the creatures gorging on nine times more prey than they did 50 years ago, with the apex predators contributing important nutrients to Top End waterways, new research suggests.
Saltwater crocodile populations have increased exponentially in recent decades, from less than 3,000 in 1971, when a ban on hunting was introduced, to more than 100,000 animals today.
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03/11/2025 - 19:01
Swings between drought and floods striking from Dallas to Shanghai, while Madrid and Cairo are among cities whose climate has flipped
Climate whiplash is already hitting major cities around the world, bringing deadly swings between extreme wet and dry weather as the climate crisis intensifies, a report has revealed.
Dozens more cities, including Lucknow, Madrid and Riyadh have suffered a climate “flip” in the last 20 years, switching from dry to wet extremes, or vice versa. The report analysed the 100 most populous cities, plus 12 selected ones, and found that 95% of them showed a distinct trend towards wetter or drier weather.
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03/11/2025 - 14:49
Applications to the sustainable farming initiative no longer accepted but no clarity on what will replace it and when
Farming and countryside groups in England are furious that the government has paused a key post-Brexit farming payments scheme with little information about what will replace it and when.
In a statement on Tuesday evening the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the sustainable farming incentive would no longer accept new applications.
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