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Vice-president Rosario Murillo calls global pact ‘the only instrument we have’ to address climate change as number of outsiders shrinks to two

Nicaragua is set to join the Paris climate agreement, according to an official statement and comments from the vice-president, Rosario Murillo, on Monday, in a move that leaves the United States and Syria as the only countries outside the global pact.

Nicaragua has already presented the relevant documents at the United Nations, Murillo, who is also first lady, said on local radio on Monday.

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The world’s only mountain parrot whose cheeky antics divide Kiwis, beats kererū and kākāpō to coveted crown

• New Zealand bird of the year leaderboard: check the pecking order

The kea, the world’s only alpine parrot, has been crowned New Zealand bird of the year, with thousands more votes cast for the species than there are surviving individuals.

New Zealand’s annual bird of the year competition hit new heights this year with more than 50,000 votes cast from around the country and the world. The competition is in its 13th year, and pits the country’s rare and endangered birds against one another. No bird has won twice.

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Last week, a parable of Australia’s energy policy chaos came to light. Not in the bawdy policy debate in Canberra, but in the quietly filed financial reports of a power station owner.

Where do sky-high energy costs come from? Energy companies who build unnecessary infrastructure, passing on the cost to consumers and making a profit. Bruce Mountain, Director, Carbon and Energy Markets., Victoria University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

New Zealand's wildlife and natural wonders are major draw cards for tourists, but tourism companies operating in national parks contribute little to conservation. Valentina Dinica, Senior Lecturer Public Policy, Victoria University of Wellington Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Photographer Tim Flach’s latest book Endangered, with text by zoologist Jonathan Baillie, offers a powerful visual record of threatened animals and ecosystems facing the harshest of challenges

Tim Flach sees his Hasselblad H4D-60 camera as a means to its end: capturing the character and emotions of an animal. Until now his interest has been in the way humans shape animals, but in his new book, Endangered, he poses the question of what these animals, and their potential disappearance, mean to us.

Twenty months of shooting and six months of assembling has resulted in a collection of more than 180 pictures. “In some cases we put up a black background in a zoo or a natural reserve, in others it meant being underwater with hippos or great white sharks.”

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Scientists were expected to report that climate change is affecting air and water temperatures, precipitation, sea level and fish in New England’s largest estuary

The Environmental Protection Agency kept three scientists from speaking at a Rhode Island event about a report that deals in part with climate change.

The scientists were expected to discuss in Providence on Monday a report on the health of Narragansett Bay, New England’s largest estuary. The EPA did not explain exactly why the scientists were told not to.

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Stephen Hawking's PhD thesis, written as a 24-year-old, was made available to the public on Monday.

David Attenborough’s ocean wildlife series returns to our screen next week – and a gravity-defying, bird-munching superfish could be its biggest star

Name: Giant trevally.

Appearance: Like a bluefin trevally, but larger and without blue fins.

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Plastic pollution, overfishing, global warming and increased acidification from burning fossil fuels means oceans are increasingly hostile to marine life

If the outlook for marine life was already looking bleak – torrents of plastic that can suffocate and starve fish, overfishing, diverse forms of human pollution that create dead zones, the effects of global warming which is bleaching coral reefs and threatening coldwater species – another threat is quietly adding to the toxic soup.

Ocean acidification is progressing rapidly around the world, new research has found, and its combination with the other threats to marine life is proving deadly. Many organisms that could withstand a certain amount of acidification are at risk of losing this adaptive ability owing to pollution from plastics, and the extra stress from global warming.

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Exclusive: Freedom of information request reveals ‘disgraceful’ amount of taxpayers’ money used to battle ClientEarth over illegally poor air pollution plans

The government spent £370,000 of taxpayers’ money unsuccessfully fighting court claims that its plans to tackle air pollution were illegally poor, a freedom of information request has revealed.

The money was spent battling two actions brought by environmental lawyers ClientEarth and included more than £90,000 in costs paid to the group after it won on both occasions. Critics said the government’s expenditure was “disgraceful” and should have been spent on cutting pollution.

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From today the most polluting vehicles on London roads will face a ‘toxicity’ fee. It’s a vital first step towards cleaning up the UK’s dangerously dirty air

A report released last week by international experts shows pollution to have caused more deaths in the UK than in many other countries in western Europe. Air pollution is largely invisible, so it is hard to grasp how much damage it is doing to our health. But studies like the Lancet commission on pollution make it clear that poor air quality increases not only the likelihood of developing a range of respiratory illnesses, but also the frequency and severity of bouts of those illnesses.

Like many GPs, I see this “double hit” in the children and adolescents who come to surgery every day. Preschool children who live near main roads have an increased risk of developing wheeze triggered by viral colds – a condition we call “preschool wheeze”. Exposure to traffic pollution also increases the chance of a child developing asthma. For preschool wheezers and children with asthma, high pollution days can then trigger episodes of severe wheezing, especially when pollution has not been dispersed by the wind.

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British Beekeepers Association survey reveals worrying drop in honey yield, with 62% of beekeepers saying neonicotinoids are to blame

Beekeepers have raised concerns over the future of honeybees as an annual survey showed a “steady decline” in the honey crop.

The survey by the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) revealed beekeepers in England produced an average of 11.8kg (26 lb) of honey per hive this year, down 1kg on last year.

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A new study finds that Americans are willing to pay an extra $15 per month on energy bills to tackle climate change.

According to a new study published by Yale scientists in Environmental Research Letters, Americans are willing to pay a carbon tax that would increase their household energy bills by $15 per month, or about 15%, on average. This result is consistent with a survey from last year that also found Americans are willing to pay an average of $15 to $20 per month to combat climate change. Another recent Yale survey found that overall, 78% of registered American voters support taxing and/or regulating carbon pollution, including 67% of Republicans and 60% of conservative Republicans.

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A Regulation Impact Statement for consultation on a National phase out of PFOS – Ratification of the Stockholm Convention amendments on PFOS is now available from the Department’s website for comment.

Most filming was done in the wild – including armoured octopuses and hypnotic cuttlefish – but some crucial behaviour had to be captured in lab conditions

Footage of captive wildlife inserted into the BBC’s Blue Planet 2 series remains “totally true to nature”, according to the makers of the flagship show that reveals new insights into life in the oceans.

An octopus that armours itself with shells and rocks, fish that use sign language and tools and dazzling cuttlefish that appear to hypnotise their prey are among the new spectacles uncovered by the series, which starts later this week.

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Epping Forest For centuries commoners were allowed to lop the beeches here for firewood. Now this ancient pollard is big enough to create its own microclimates

Centuries of sunlight have solidified into this beech’s massive presence, which creates its own woodland world. I stand beneath the grandeur of its shaded columns in veneration. But it was not always this way. This great beast was made to bend to the will of generations of commoners, lopped for the humblest of produce, a 10-yearly crop of firewood. It was a labourer, a working tree.

Until the mid 19th century, that is, when cropping ceased. Today, 20 poles, each the size of a mature tree, thrust skywards from the lumpen head of this ancient pollard. And around its great girth, in its crevices and creases, the microclimate changes with the compass. Dominating the trunk’s north-west curve, like a coral outcrop, the bracket fungus Perenniporia fraxinea fans out dramatically in three layers more than 120cm wide. For 20 years I’ve watched this veteran grow so large that its soft, skin-coloured underbelly is now punctured by a million tiny spore-producing pores.

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The Coalition's proposed National Energy Guarantee is not a policy at all, just the idea of one. And attractive as it may be on a notional level, it is a long way short of being "workable" or even remotely effective. Here are 30 reasons why it should be approached with caution.

Bertrand Piccard wants to show governments 1,000 innovations that together will make it possible to reduce energy consumption and cut greenhouse gas emissions by half.

NEG design could have immediate impact on large-scale renewable energy projects, particularly those looking to by-pass control of big gen-tailers" and go "merchant".