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Renewable energy investment touched a new high in Australia last year as spending on new power plants more than doubled, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Australia's scorching summers aren't just inconvenient: heatwaves are deadly. Yet new research has found many vulnerable people don't have a plan for extreme heat. Andrew Gissing, Adjunct Fellow, Macquarie University Lucinda Coates, Risk Scientist, Risk Frontiers Natural Hazards Research Centre, Macquarie University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Scientists capture "incredible" images of instructions contained in DNA being read

A group of divers has connected two underwater caverns in eastern Mexico to reveal what is believed to be the world's largest flooded cave, a discovery that could shed light on the ancient Maya civilisation. The Yucatán peninsula is studded with monumental relics of the Maya people, whose cities drew on an extensive network of sinkholes known as cenotes. Some cenotes had religious significance to the Maya, whose descendants remain in the region

• World's longest underwater cave system discovered in Mexico by divers

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Finnish start-up ICEYE releases a "first light" picture from its novel radar satellite.

Wrap, the agency responsible for tackling waste, blames government cuts for the redundancies, that come just a week after the prime minister’s pledge

Just one week after Theresa May and Michael Gove promised to eradicate the scourge of plastic waste, government budget cuts have forced a key agency charged with tackling the problem to make more than a tenth of its staff redundant, a move campaigners said could sabotage progress.

About 25 people are losing their jobs at the Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap), the body’s chief executive confirmed on Wednesday.

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5,000 hectares of cotton thought to be affected by off-target spray drift, says Bernie Bierhoff of Walgett Cotton Growers’ Association

On Christmas Day farmers around Walgett in north-west New South Wales noticed their infant cotton plants had begun to wither. Leaves began to curl and die, killing some plants and stressing others.

Within days, it was clear Walgett was facing a serious incident that had affected nearly 6,000 hectares (60 sq km) of cotton farms reaching as far as Burren Junction, and Rowena.

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A monkey from Ethiopia with a distinctive "handlebar moustache" has been identified as a distinct species.

We asked you to recommend the best ways to reduce your plastic consumption and avoid excess waste. Here’s what some of you said

For 70 years, the world’s plastic usage has grown inexorably from humble beginnings to a position where humanity now produce roughly its own weight in plastic every year.

But is there a turning point in view? Guardian revelations about the scale of plastic waste and the threat it poses has finally prompted the authorities to take the issue seriously. Michael Gove is considering a deposit return scheme for plastic bottles, Sadiq Khan is looking at new water fountains to contain the plastic proliferation, and now Theresa May has set out her own plastic-free stall.

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Exclusive: Guardian investigation unwraps truth about supermarket plastics after big brands refuse to divulge packaging secrets

• Read more: The plastic-free stores showing the big brands how to do it

Britain’s leading supermarkets create more than 800,000 tonnes of plastic packaging waste every year, according to an investigation by the Guardian which reveals how top chains keep details of their plastic footprint secret.

As concern over the scale of unnecessary plastic waste grows, the Guardian asked Britain’s eight leading supermarkets to explain how much plastic packaging they sell to consumers and whether they would commit to a plastic-free aisle in their stores.

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Effective Space says it will launch "space drones" to prolong the life of telecommunications satellites in orbit.

Conservationists say government scheme, aimed at placating grouse moor land owners who object to the birds breeding on their land, will not boost numbers of the endangered birds

Controversial government plans to remove chicks from the nests of one of England’s rarest birds and rear them in captivity have been criticised as “nonsense” by conservationists.

Hen harrier chicks or eggs will be removed from nests in northern England and hand-reared in captivity before being reintroduced into the wild, under the terms of a two-year licence issued by Natural England, the government’s conservation watchdog.

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In short, from a practical standpoint, as little additional warming as possible

In an interview with Reuters last week, Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said,

The climate is changing. That’s not the debate. The debate is how do we know what the ideal surface temperature is in 2100?

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Proposal sees 300 metres cut from runway in effort to help reduce costs to £15bn, but opponents say move changes forecasted economic benefits

Heathrow is to unveil proposals for a shorter, cheaper third runway in a public consultation to help push its expansion plans through.

The airport will propose cutting 300 metres from the length of the northwestern runway, a scheme approved by the government following the Airports Commission process, in an attempt to cut costs.

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Vague ambitions, such as banning new petrol cars by 2040, must be turned into solid plans, says the Committee on Climate Change

The UK will miss its legally binding carbon targets without urgent government action, official advisers have warned.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) said vague ambitions, such as banning new petrol and diesel cars by 2040, must be turned into solid plans and new policies, such as planting more trees, are needed.

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Carbon neutral certification provides credibility to carbon neutral claims made by organisations, or claims made relating to products, services, events, precincts and buildings. New certification fees are available starting 1 January 2018.

Cadson Bury, Lynher Valley: Early farmers and their animals were protected from marauders and wild creatures lurking in the dense woodland below

Just below the summit a shaggy-coated cow with long, curving horns gazes into the greyness of this dull afternoon. The sound of rushing water carries up from the river, now swollen with run-off from Redmoor and Tresellern Marshes, the Withey Brook and other boggy headstreams on the eastern side of Bodmin Moor, as well as little tributaries from intermediate waterlogged land.

Up here, on this precipitous hill, topped with defensive earthworks of ditch and rampart, a dozen or so highland cattle of varying age (owned by the Crago family of the nearby Cadson Farm) mooch about, graze and thrive on heather and the coarser vegetation that would otherwise smother this iron age hill-fort and the adjoining hillside. Yellow gorse flowers and the silver bark of birch gleam in the murk and, below, in the Lynher Valley and on the Newton Ferrers estate, the leafless tree canopy (dominated by lichen-encrusted alder and oak) is tinged pale green and purple. Inside the eastern entrance, the encampment of some six acres is a spongy oval space of trampled bracken and mossy turf. This enclave was once a secure area for early farmers, where they and their animals were relatively protected from marauders and wild creatures lurking in the dense woodland below.

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The Threatened Species Scientific Committee is seeking comments on the proposals for ten frog species. Consultation closes 2 March 2018

Everywhere humans go, we take our pets. Fleas are along for the ride, spreading everything from typhus to bubonic plague. Nicholas Clark, Postdoctoral Fellow in Disease Ecology, The University of Queensland Jan Slapeta, Professor of Veterinary and Molecular Parasitology, University of Sydney Konstans Wells, Research Fellow in Ecology, Griffith University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Indra today announced it has been chosen by Monash University as a key technology partner in a project to establish a sustainable electricity Microgrid at its Clayton campus.