The Guardian

Researchers develop mathematical equation to determine impact of people’s intense activity on earth

For the first time, researchers have developed a mathematical equation to describe the impact of human activity on the earth, finding people are causing the climate to change 170 times faster than natural forces.

The equation was developed in conjunction with Professor Will Steffen, a climate change expert and researcher at the Australian National University, and was published in the journal, The Anthropocene Review.

Natural lighting or at least LEDs will improve your mood, and there are other positive steps to take to make the office a more world-friendly environment

If you’re dreading the start of the working week tomorrow can I just check it’s not the lighting? A 1990s study showed plentiful natural light to be a top determinant of job satisfaction.

If you can’t get near a window at least press for LEDs (they have a life of up to 60,000 hours in comparison to 6,000 hours for a fluorescent tube). They also improve your mood, productivity and energy efficiency.

There’s a long list of blame and shame for Australia’s threadbare climate and energy policy, but Turnbull’s party takes the cake

Watching politics builds a high tolerance for hypocrisy and humbug, but even I am aghast at the Coalition’s antics this week – fondling a lump of coal in parliament while accusing the opposition of an “ideological approach to energy” and negligence in policy planning.

Seriously. There’s a long list of blame and shame for Australia’s threadbare climate and energy policy, and the failure to plan for an energy market crisis that experts have warned about for years. But Malcolm Turnbull’s Coalition takes out first place.

Analysis shows spike in fossil fuel-dominated state’s wholesale spot price this year far eclipses that in SA in July 2016 which sparked calls for a national inquiry into renewable energy

Extreme price spikes in Queensland’s fossil fuel-dominated electricity market this year have far eclipsed those seen in South Australia last July, which sparked calls of a national inquiry into renewable energy and led the federal Coalition to call for a halt to state-based renewable energy targets.

Since the start of 2017, Queensland’s wholesale spot price for electricity has spiked above $13,000 per megawatt hour a total of 71 times, according to analysis by Dylan McConnell from the Climate & Energy College at the University of Melbourne.

Order for 60-day pause on regulations not yet implemented includes protection for endangered rusty patched bumblebee, which experts say is near extinction

Donald Trump has been accused of targeting Muslims, media outlets and even department stores in his first month in the White House. Now, the US president may have doomed a threatened bumblebee.

An executive order freezing new regulations could push the rusty patched bumblebee towards extinction, environmental groups claim. The 60-day pause on all federal regulations that have yet to be implemented – which includes the bumblebee protection – will review “questions of fact, law, and policy they raise”, according to the White House memo.

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

A tiger family drinking at the watering hole, a nightingale and a snake that plays dead are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Do you like pangolins or silky sharks? How about the black-legged kittiwake? Vote for your favourite in the Wildscreen Arkive’s Valentine’s Day campaign to help protect under-appreciated species from poaching and climate change

As temperatures in New South Wales, South Australia, the ACT, Queensland and Victoria soar, there are predictions of rolling blackouts in some parts of the national electricity grid. However, experts agree there is more than enough generation capacity in the energy market to meet demand, so why are we having power outages? Is it market failure? Are renewables to blame? Or are power companies gaming the system?

Warblington, Hampshire By associating with large ungulates, these birds can obtain up to 50% more food using two-thirds of the energy required for lone foraging

A loose flock of egrets has gathered by the cattle in the corner of the pasture to the west of the cemetery. Three of the white herons are immediately identifiable as little egrets, their yellow feet beacons in the mizzle. The fourth bird looks dumpy, hunchbacked and stubby-billed next to its elegant, slim-necked, rapier-billed cousins. It is a cattle egret, a species that has had one of the most rapid and wide-ranging natural expansions of any bird, but is still relatively rare in Britain. Two of them were spotted here in mid-December. A few days later, they were joined by a third and, by the new year, five birds were regularly being sighted in the fields surrounding the church.

Related: A solitary little egret is an elegant sentinel on the muddy creek

Dozens of volunteers form a barrier in Golden Bay in an effort to prevent more whales from stranding themselves after hundreds died on Thursday night. The Department of Conservation (DOC) discovered 416 pilot whales had beached themselves at Farewell Spit at the top of the south island, the largest stranding in decades. Volunteer Peter Wiles said: ‘It is one of the saddest things I have seen.’

Federal government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation says coal ‘seriously challenged’ as a commercial investment

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation has said it is “very unlikely” it would invest in new coal-fired generators and poured cold water on the federal government’s push to support “clean coal” technology.

The CEFC’s hostile approach to the sustainability and commercial viability of new coal plants means the government will have to change CEFC’s investment rules or directly subsidise new coal plants if it wants to support them.

While it is good news for the environment that UK sales of electric cars are rising (Report, 7 February) this trend is unlikely to really take off while we have such a disjointed and shortsighted policy regarding electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure.

Boris Johnson sold the London-wide charging network to a French company that now runs the system as Source London. It has started to charge for charging, at rates that are unviable for many drivers, especially those with hybrid vehicles, where the cost of the electricity is more than the cost of petrol for the same mileage travelled. Furthermore, some London councils now make their own arrangements with other providers so there is no longer a functioning London-wide system.

Experts say decline to coverage of only 7.19 acres of forest could be due to late winter storms last year that knocked down more than 100 acres of trees

The number of monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico dropped by 27% this year, reversing last year’s recovery from historically low numbers, according to a study by government and independent experts released Thursday.

The experts say the decline could be due to late winter storms last year that blew down more than 100 acres (40 hectares) of forests where migrating monarch butterflies spend the winter in central Mexico.

Europe will vastly overshoot its carbon emissions target for coal unless it closes all 300 power stations, says thinktank Climate Analytics

The European Union will “vastly overshoot” its Paris climate pledges unless its coal emissions are completely phased out within 15 years, a stress test of the industry has found.

Coal’s use is falling by about 1% a year in Europe but still generates a quarter of the continent’s power – and a fifth of its greenhouse gas emissions.

Authorities say no risk of contamination after blast in machine room at facility 15 miles west of Cherbourg

An explosion has occurred at EDF’s Flamanville nuclear plant in northern France, causing minor injuries but no risk of contamination, authorities have said.

The blast took place in the engine room at the plant, which is 15 miles west of the port of Cherbourg.

GoT’s Jaime Lannister has shown little love for the far north, unlike the man who plays him, Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who has been collecting street view imagery for Google in southern Greenland to highlight the impact of climate change

• Discover Machu Picchu from your sofa

Fake news propagates through the conservative media to the halls of Congress where science is under attack

This weekend, conservative media outlets launched an attack on climate scientists with a manufactured scandal. The fake news originated from an accusation made by former NOAA scientist John Bates about a 2015 paper by some of his NOAA colleagues. The technical term to describe the accusation is ‘a giant nothingburger,’ as Bates clarified in an interview with E&E News:

The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was.

I grew up with a piano in my bedroom, but now the thought of ivory fills me with revulsion. The UK needs to impose a total ban on the trade of elephant tusks

Growing up in our two up, two down terraced house on the Southside of Edinburgh, I shared my bedroom with a cherished family heirloom – my granny’s mini-grand. This beautiful piano had been to the other side of the world and back. It ended up taking up half my room and a whole lot of my life. I taught myself to play on it, bashing out the sevenths while pretending to be (pre-Wings) McCartney. Now I think of that piano with total revulsion. I believe anyone in the possession of ivory should feel the same. It is over. It has to be.

Look at the knife handles or antique toothpick and then think of the dead mother with her face hacked off as her tuskless, helpless one-year-old tries to nudge her back to life. Google image search is always a useful resource. I feel no differently about the thought of a gorilla-hand ashtray (yes, they are a thing in parts of the Far East) or a nice cool glass of lion bone wine (ditto). One more time: ivory is so over.

Galilee Blockade, which opposes the $16bn Carmichael mine, urges followers to apply for jobs with the Indian company

A civil disobedience campaign targeting Adani’s controversial Queensland coal project has asked almost 12,000 supporters to sign up for a job with the miner.

The Galilee Blockade is working on infiltrating Adani and related companies to gain sources of information to help its plans for “direct action”.