The Guardian

Gavin Schmidt of Goddard Institute for Space Studies warns of likelihood of new high as heatwave bakes large parts of planet

July will likely be Earth’s hottest month in hundreds if not thousands of years, Gavin Schmidt, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told reporters on Thursday, as a persistent heatwave baked swaths of the US south.

Schmidt made the announcement during a meeting at Nasa’s Washington headquarters that convened agency climate experts and other leaders, including Nasa administrator Bill Nelson and chief scientist and senior climate adviser Kate Calvin.

Our planet faces ecological catastrophe – and 50% of aviation carbon emissions are caused by private flights. That’s untenable

Last Friday, I was arrested along with a group of climate activists for blocking the entrance to the East Hampton airport in New York and stopping private jet arrivals and departures. Many people have asked me why.

The truth is I am terrified of the future of our climate, and I believe that non-violent civil disobedience is the best way to create transformative change. I have covered disruptive protest and social issues in my films, and supported movements through philanthropy. So, at 63, I decided it was time for me to stand in protest with other activists, to put my body on the line.

Abigail E Disney is an Emmy-winning documentary film-maker and activist and the great-niece of Walt Disney

Detailed analysis finds plant diets lead to 75% less climate-heating emissions, water pollution and land use than meat-rich ones

Eating a vegan diet massively reduces the damage to the environment caused by food production, the most comprehensive analysis to date has concluded.

The research showed that vegan diets resulted in 75% less climate-heating emissions, water pollution and land use than diets in which more than 100g of meat a day was eaten. Vegan diets also cut the destruction of wildlife by 66% and water use by 54%, the study found.

In a cost of living crisis, heat pumps and electric cars are out of reach for most. Britain needs to fund a genuinely fair transition – and fast

It can’t be easy being Barbie. As if life wasn’t tough enough for an ageing doll with a decorative dimwit for a boyfriend, this week she suffered the indignity of being dragged into a byelection.

Or more precisely, her bright pink classic Corvette did. In easily the most excruciating moment of an already awkward attempt to cling on to Boris Johnson’s old Uxbridge seat, Tory HQ briefly tried to enliven its main line of attack by suggesting to friendly newspapers that if Barbie for some unexplained reason rocked up in the suburbs, she might have to pay £12.50 for breaching mayor Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez), due to be extended to the capital’s outer fringes from August. At the time of writing, the voters’ verdict on this one is still hotly awaited. But whatever the outcome, hiding behind a dolly feels like the kind of political low point nobody gets over in a hurry.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Climate campaigners complain to ACCC over Appea ad that claimed gas was ‘50% cleaner’ than coal

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Environmental campaigners have asked Australia’s consumer watchdog to investigate an oil and gas industry public relations campaign that critics claim is misleading the public on the climate effects of fossil fuel.

The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (Appea) last month dropped a claim in its “Future of Gas” advertising campaign that gas was “50% cleaner” than coal.

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Operators warn long-haul routes to nation risk being ‘priced out’ of international aviation when carbon pricing takes effect over next decade

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International airlines could cut back flights to Australia in coming years because the high-polluting long haul routes stand out as low-hanging fruit to meet future environmental commitments, the country’s parliament has been warned.

Mandatory emissions reductions schemes for global aviation are still being negotiated. However, Australia risks being “priced out” of the international aviation network when carbon pricing and other binding targets begin taking effect over the next decade, the Australian Airports Association (AAA) said in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry.

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Males show fewer tooth-rake marks when mothers are present and have stopped breeding, research shows

Post-menopausal killer whales protect their sons from getting injured in fights with other whales, scientists have found.

The study showed that males showed fewer tooth-rake marks – scars left when whales scrape their teeth across another’s skin – when their mother was still present and had stopped breeding. But the protective effect did not extend to daughters.

The state’s wildlife department is concerned the friendly fur-covered swimmer has become too acclimated to humans

A five-year-old sea otter who gained notoriety for commandeering surfboards has continued her reign as a viral sensation as she’s managed to avoid multiple efforts to capture her.

For days, staff with California’s department of fish and wildlife (CDFW) and the Monterey Bay aquarium have attempted to catch otter 841 – but she has given them the slip each time.

Campaigners lose judicial review of decision to approve plan by UK Oil & Gas to drill on agricultural land

Fossil fuel prospectors have cleared another hurdle on their path to drill for oil and gas near an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) in the Surrey Hills after campaigners lost a judicial review of the plan.

Opponents of the plan to sink an exploration well near the village of Dunsfold argued it was inconsistent with a decision to refuse a similar application on the basis of the greenhouse gas emissions it would produce.

Politicians seem to have no idea of the action required if we want to keep a functioning society and economy

• Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL

It’s hard not to wonder if the government is living on another planet. One that isn’t in the grip of the highest temperatures ever recorded, where tens of thousands of people are not dying every summer in blistering heatwaves, where the oceans aren’t boiling. This is the only explanation for the colossally inadequate national climate adaptation programme released this week.

There is so much wrong with it that it’s hard to know where to begin. The programme actually constitutes the third of three five-year plans, and therein lies the main problem. You can’t plan in five-year chunks for climate mayhem that is set to last for decades, probably centuries. If it is to make living in Hothouse Britain safer and more bearable, any plan worth its salt has to look much further ahead and take in the bigger picture.

Trade association, which promotes hydrogen for home heating, called for clean heat market mechanism to be pushed back to 2026

Lobbyists for the gas boiler industry are trying to delay the introduction of new government measures to speed up the take-up of heat pumps, a leaked document shows.

The move, in a draft document obtained by the DeSmog investigative journalism group and seen by the Guardian, appears to be part of an intensive two-year lobbying effort by a key gas boiler industry organisation, which has been critical of heat pumps, and promoted hydrogen for home heating to government and opposition parties, despite strong evidence of its unsuitability.

MPs and newspapers alike are attacking the public body charged with conserving the English countryside for doing just that

Several grisly bloodsports, legal or otherwise, are enjoyed in the English countryside. But none is as popular as shooting the messenger. Rather than attend to our environmental crisis, politicians, lobbyists and the media prefer to hunt the people seeking to address the problem. No quarry is pursued as keenly as the government’s conservation agency Natural England.

This weekend, a full-spectrum attack was launched in the billionaire press. The Sunday Telegraph raged against the agency’s call for “nutrient neutrality”. This means that new housing or business developments should not increase the amount of shit in our rivers. The paper also attacked Natural England’s advice that when new homes are built there should be no net increase in air pollution. It quoted a mysterious “insider” accusing the agency of “green activism”. What’s the betting that this “insider” is a property developer? A similar attack was launched in the Times on Monday.

Tatton Park flower show features garden of flowering plants whose heady scents at night attract crucial but ‘invisible’ pollinators

Gardens should be as attractive to pollinators at night as they are in the day, horticulturalists have said, as they present a moth-friendly version at a flower show in Cheshire.

The RHS nocturnal pollinators experience garden at Tatton Park flower show, which began on Wednesday, showcases flowering plants that produce heady scents at night to attract moths, which a 2020 study found were crucial but “invisible” pollinators.

Claiming ‘woke hysteria’ is driving policy, lobby group Advance Australia makes a series of claims by the usual suspects that are easily debunked

Have you been “infected by this woke climate hysteria”? Would you like some reheated climate tropes to go with your anti-renewables populist rhetoric?

If your answer is yes, then the conservative activist group Advance Australia has a campaign for you.

As much of the northern hemisphere endures blistering heatwaves and parts of Asia are deluged with rain, a number of climate records are being challenged

The climate crisis is moving into uncharted territory as much of the northern hemisphere endures a blistering heatwave, many countries are deluged with rain, sea surface temperatures reach new heights, and Antarctic sea ice new lows. A number of climate records – some unofficial – have tumbled in recent weeks.

Many factors have combined for this to happen, including climate change but also the El Niño weather event, and the northern hemisphere summer.

Campaigners say cheap flights, made possible by tax breaks for airlines, are encouraging people to heat the planet

Europe’s cheap flights and pricey train tickets promote dirty forms of transport, campaigners say, with “outrageous” tax breaks encouraging people to heat the planet as they head on holiday.

Train tickets are double the price of flights for the same routes, on average, according to an analysis from Greenpeace published on Thursday. The campaigners compared tickets on 112 routes on nine different days. To get from London to Barcelona, they found, the cost of taking the train is up to 30 times the cost of jumping on a plane.

The planet is being hit with a double whammy of global heating in 2023: on top of the rise in global temperature caused by greenhouse gas emissions is an emerging El Niño. This sporadic event is the biggest natural influence on year-to-year weather and adds a further spurt of warmth to an already overheating world. The Guardian's environment editor, Damian Carrington, explains what El Niño is and how it affects extreme weather

• Climate-heating El Niño has arrived and threatens lives, declares UN

These incidents are spreading – and along with them, bogus narratives casting the killer whales as marine avengers

In the opening sequence of the BBC’s original Blue Planet series of 2001, TV’s first real look at life within the world’s oceans, a pod of orca are shown hunting a grey whale and her calf. Over and over, the killer whales jump on the calf, pushing it under the waves, determined to drown it. Once it is finally dead, after a six-hour battle, they eat only its lower jaw and tongue.

I vividly remember watching this as a 10-year-old in 2001 and thinking: I wouldn’t like to take on a killer whale. Lately, however, their attention seems to have turned uncomfortably close to home. In the past few years, a pod of orcas has been ramming boats in the waters off south-west Europe at seemingly increasing rates. From 52 such “interactions” recorded in 2020, there were 197 in 2021, 207 last year and a steady number so far this summer. In three cases, the orcas have damaged boats so badly that they have sunk.

Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist

Technocratic tinkering and cautious managerialism can’t begin to address the crisis. We need vision – and now

Some would argue that the speech by Tony Blair at Labour’s 1994 party conference in Blackpool was era-defining. “It is time to break out of the past and break through with a clear, radical and modern vision for Britain,” he said.

One may disagree with that vision – but he committed to it years before his election, and delivered much of it in the years after. Huge investment in public services; a minimum wage; a Freedom of Information Act; devolution for Scotland and Wales, and commitment to peace in Northern Ireland.

Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion

The warming of the planet – including the most up-to-date data for 2023 – is entirely consistent with what climate modelers warned decades ago

Thirty years ago, the world’s nations agreed to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. But what is “dangerous climate change”? Just turn on the television, read the headlines of the morning paper or view your social media feeds. For we are watching it play out in real time this summer, more profoundly than ever before, in the form of unprecedented floods, heatwaves and wildfires. Now we know what dangerous climate change looks like. As has been said of obscenity, we know it when we see it. We’re seeing it – and it is obscene.

Scorching temperatures persist across Europe, North America and Asia, as wildfires rage from Canada to Greece. The heat is as relentless as it is intense. For example, Phoenix, Arizona, has broken its record of 18 consecutive days above 110F (43.3C). Even the nights, generally relied upon as a chance to recover from the blistering days, now offer little relief: for more than a week, nighttime temperatures in Phoenix have exceeded 90F (32.2C). Meanwhile, severe and deadly flooding has stricken South Korea, Japan, and the north-east United States, from Pennsylvania to Vermont.

Michael E Mann is a professor of earth and environmental science and the director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at The University of Pennsylvania. He is author of the forthcoming book Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis

Susan Joy Hassol is the director of Climate Communication. She publishes Quick Facts on the links between extreme weather and climate change