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Exclusive: Experts say the $150m project, due to be de-orbited next year, provides vital data on forests and the carbon stored in them

Forest experts and scientists are asking Nasa to extend the life of a “key” climate and biodiversity sensor due to be destroyed in the Earth’s atmosphere early next year.

The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (Gedi) mission – pronounced like Jedi in Star Wars – was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the International Space Station (ISS) in December 2018, and has provided the first 3D map of the world’s forests.

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Antarctica reaches 40C above normal at same time as north pole hits levels usually seen later in year

Startling heatwaves at both of Earth’s poles are causing alarm among climate scientists, who have warned the “unprecedented” events could signal faster and abrupt climate breakdown.

Temperatures in Antarctica reached record levels at the weekend, an astonishing 40C above normal in places.

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Our anxiety levels remain high, a poll reveals, as war follows pandemic. Don’t be shy of occasional joy

Have you been enjoying the sunshine? Perhaps that’s a redundant question: it has been difficult to avoid the delicious grins on people’s faces, the exaggerated generosity in their manners, the readiness to smile at strangers. Even the traditionally uptight denizens of London have been seen to unfurrow their brows and actually catch each other’s eye. Something feels different. Something feels – and forgive me if I’m speaking out of place here – not completely awful.

Nature’s good at that, of course. Give the lady her due, she always turns it around at the end of winter. In this part of the northern hemisphere we spend a good third of a year convinced that the world is cold, dark and possibly going to hell in a handcart, then out pop the daffodils and it’s like someone’s thrown us a surprise party but remembered only to invite our more cheerful, better behaved alter egos.

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A move out of the city gives you a front-row seat for the show of the season

Last spring, I finally moved out of town. That makes it sound like I gave in after decades of edgy murder-mile living, rivers of piss, my children playing with syringes. I did a tiny bit of that back when you could still see blowjobs and drug deals from the window of my east London flat and not men in ironic Deirdre Barlow glasses selling rare succulents for £700, but mainly I lived in a quiet corner of Brussels. When I moved back to the UK, it was to a provincial city centre where I complained constantly, like those idiots who pay millions to live in Soho, then decide they don’t like the noise of people having fun.

So after a year enveloped in the blessed peace of the outer suburbs, what have I learned? Well, after a lifetime of aching for the first frost, fetishising boots and boring on about hygge, I admit it: I was wrong about winter. It turns out that when you move somewhere with no insulation as an energy crisis starts to bite, no amount of woodsmoke-scented candles and hot chocolate will keep you cosy. When people recommend turning your thermostat down a degree, I laugh, my breath dancing spirals in the morgue-cold air: the modest number on ours is a mad aspiration, like me saying I’ll do a 7am yoga class. Getting out of bed (two duvets, blanket, electric blanket, flattened and grilled like a human panini) requires superhuman effort: I put my clothes on top of my pyjamas, so no skin is ever exposed, mummying myself in so many layers my arms stick out like a toddler in a padded snowsuit. It’s very sexy.

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Labor's landslide win in South Australia, which saw energy minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan lose his seat, has implications for the grid leading world's transition to renewables, and national policy.

The post Labor returned in South Australia landslide, but questions loom over hydrogen future appeared first on RenewEconomy.

When he was growing up, Ichio Usui was often told not to waste food. In his series Silent Voice, now shortlisted in the Sony world photography awards, the Japan-based photographic artist has dramatised this warning by fixing googly eyes to the sort of food that often gets thrown away owing to its shape or colour or an expiry date.

“Japan’s food waste per capita is one of the highest in the world,” he says. “I think we need to understand this problem, and people tend to empathise more with something that has eyes or resembles some sort of face.”

• The Sony world photography awards 2022 exhibition is at Somerset House, London, 13 April-2 May

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AGL wins approval for Liddell big battery, at site of soon to be closed coal plant, which will have storage of up to 2 gigawatt hours.

The post AGL gets green light for 2GWh big battery at Liddell appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Three cosmonauts ditch the standard-issue Russian uniforms in an apparent show of solidarity.

Yoga guru will visit dozens of countries en route from London to India to raise awareness of plight of one of nature’s greatest resources

One of India’s best-known spiritual leaders is embarking on a 100-day motorbike journey from London to India to raise awareness of one of nature’s most undervalued resources.

Sadhguru, or Jaggi Vasudev, is setting off on Monday on a 30,000km (18,600-mile) trip through Europe and the Middle East in an effort to “save soil”, meeting celebrities, environmentalists and influencers in dozens of countries along the way.

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The Ukraine war is sending the cost of energy and food soaring across the world. Price controls may be the only way to stop a devastating chain reaction

The war in Ukraine has gone global. Spiking commodity prices are on track to see their sharpest rises since 1970, sending a shock wave of suffering across the world as the prices of essential goods every human needs to survive are surging upwards. Wheat prices are up 60% since February. Food prices are now higher than during the global food crisis of 2008, which pushed 155 million people into extreme poverty. Cheap Ukrainian wheat that vulnerable nations including Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Lebanon rely on lies stranded. If we aren’t careful, the “Ukraine shock” could fast be approaching the awesome scale of the OPEC and Iran shocks that rocked the 1970s.

But the “shock” metaphor is deceptive. This is not a momentary blast; all the warning signs point to the fact that this could turn into an avalanche. If that happens, we are just at the beginning of a decade-long deluge.

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People asked to record flowering cherry and plum trees near them to see whether patterns are changing

The British public have been asked to track flowering fruit trees to help determine whether climate change is changing blooming patterns, in one of the largest studies of its kind.

The University of Reading and Oracle for Research have developed a fruit recording website where citizen scientists can easily post their findings. People will initially be asked to record the flowering cherry and plum trees near them, with apple trees soon to follow.

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EU member states have doled out just over half of this year’s free allocation of ETS carbon allowances and some 94.5% of the quota for 2021, data shows.

Experts say the UK should reduce the amount of toxic 'forever chemicals' it allows in drinking water.

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We are looking for a Clean Fuel Standard Project Manager and Partnerships Specialist to oversee all of the work done by outside parties. This work includes managing a stakeholder advisory panel and overseeing agreements with outside parties covering equitable transportation electrification, an annual fuel supply forecast, and priorities for transportation electrification investments.

Emitters saw their California Carbon Allowance (CCA) net short position nearly flatten this week as prices lurched back from six-month lows, while speculators’ net long holdings sank to a new 10-month nadir, according to US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data published Friday.

California and Quebec will slightly decrease the number of current vintage allowances offered in the jurisdictions’ May cap-and-trade sale, with a reduction in unsold volume offsetting a rise in V22 units, according to a notice published Friday.

International emissions trade could be used to incentivise the capture and removal of billions of tonnes of CO2, according to research commissioned by oil firms this week that set out how heavy industries could cooperate in light of net zero commitments.

California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) credit prices spiralled to fresh four-year lows on Friday as traders saw little in the way of support coming into the transportation sector programme.

Italian utility Enel saw a 22% surge in ETS-covered power generation in 2021, according to annual results published late Thursday that showed an advance it its near-term hedging.