The Guardian

New study suggests young regent honeyeaters are not getting the chance to learn mating calls

What happens to a species if the music starts to die, or when their songs become corrupted or their singers have never heard the original tunes?

A new study has found that a loss of melody and song could be a bad sign for one of Australia’s rarest songbirds – the regent honeyeater.

Host of Cop26 overseeing policies that will increase greenhouse gas emissions, campaigners say

Boris Johnson put the global climate crisis at the heart of the UK’s foreign policy on Tuesday, setting out his vision of “global Britain” after a government review placed climate as “the UK’s foremost international priority”.

The prime minister told MPs: “We will host Cop26 [climate summit] in Glasgow in November, and rally as many nations as possible behind the target of net zero [greenhouse gas emissions] by 2050, leading by example since the UK was the first major economy to accept this obligation in law.”

The government spent millions subsidizing new wood heaters supposed to burn more cleanly. But an investigation has discovered critical flaws

Glenn Helkenn lives in a spruce forest, in a tiny log cabin he built himself on the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska’s third largest city.

Robert Del Naja tells MPs one band cancelling a tour as Coldplay did will not ‘change a thing’

Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja has said musicians all end up “looking like hypocrites” because of a lack of action on environmental issues by the industry.

The star, also known as 3D, said he was “pretty livid” with the industry for making green pledges while not acting to reduce its carbon footprint.

Big industry players pushing techno-fixes are ignoring the only realistic solution to the climate crisis: renewables

Now that the whole world seems to be aligned behind the goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the nuclear industry is straining every sinew to present itself as an invaluable ally in the ambitious aim. Energy experts remain starkly divided on whether or not we can reach this global net zero target without nuclear power, but regardless, it remains a hard sell for pro-nuclear enthusiasts.

The problems they face are the same ones that have dogged the industry for decades: ever-higher costs, seemingly inevitable delays, no solutions to the nuclear waste challenge, security and proliferation risks.

Bladeless turbines that waggles like a dashboard toy could be the wind-harnessing tool of the future as they move within the range of vibration of the wind to generate electricity.

The design recently won the approval of Norway’s state energy company Equinor, which named Vortex on a list of the 10 most exciting startups within the energy sector

Greener UK claims analysis shows rhetoric on environment not being matched by action

Ministers are weakening the UK’s environmental protections in the aftermath of leaving the EU, an assessment of the government’s performance has found, despite promises of a green Brexit.

Legally binding commitments on key areas of pollution, nature restoration, waste and resource use have been put off to 2037, and the proposed new environmental watchdog will lack teeth, according to a report by Greener UK, a coalition of 12 campaigning groups.

‘Drop-in’ replacement for gas boilers may help tackle challenge of cutting emissions from home heating

The creators of the world’s first microwave-powered boiler have said it can provide a straightforward, zero-emissions replacement for the gas boilers that heat most homes in the UK.

Heat Wayv is building prototypes and expects to trial the boilers in homes by the end of 2022, with the first sales to customers targeted for 2024. It says a unit suitable for a three- or four-bedroom home would cost about £3,500, the same as an equivalent gas boiler.

‘Skybrators’ generate clean energy without environmental impact of large windfarms, say green pioneers

The giant windfarms that line hills and coastlines are not the only way to harness the power of the wind, say green energy pioneers who plan to reinvent wind power by foregoing the need for turbine towers, blades – and even wind.

“We are not against traditional windfarms,” says David Yáñez, the inventor of Vortex Bladeless. His six-person startup, based just outside Madrid, has pioneered a turbine design that can harness energy from winds without the sweeping white blades considered synonymous with wind power.

International Renewable Energy Agency says $131tn investment in renewables could be required over three decades

Renewable electricity production needs to grow eight times faster than the current rate to help limit global heating, according to a report.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) said urgent action was needed to keep pace with rising demand for electricity, which could require a total investment of $131tn in renewables by 2050.

Study of tree rings dating back to Roman empire concludes weather since 2014 has been extraordinary

The series of severe droughts and heatwaves in Europe since 2014 is the most extreme for more than 2,000 years, research suggests.

The study analysed tree rings dating as far back as the Roman empire to create the longest such record to date. The scientists said global heating was the most probable cause of the recent rise in extreme heat.

A sandstorm has combined with already high air pollution to turn the sky over Beijing an eerie orange. Air quality indexes recorded a “hazardous” 999 rating on Monday as commuters travelled to work through the thick, dark air across China’s capital and further west. Large-scale deforestation is considered a factor in the spring dust storms that are relatively common at this time of year and are usually attributed to winds blowing across the Gobi desert

• Beijing skies turn orange as sandstorm and pollution send readings off the scale

Guardian analysis of 44 studies finds nearly 40% of 9,000 products from restaurants, markets and fishmongers were mislabelled

• Is your fish a fake? How to spot seafood fraud and what to do if you’re suspicious

A Guardian Seascape analysis of 44 recent studies of more than 9,000 seafood samples from restaurants, fishmongers and supermarkets in more than 30 countries found that 36% were mislabelled, exposing seafood fraud on a vast global scale.

Many of the studies used relatively new DNA analysis techniques. In one comparison of sales of fish labelled “snapper” by fishmongers, supermarkets and restaurants in Canada, the US, the UK, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, researchers found mislabelling in about 40% of fish tested. The UK and Canada had the highest rates of mislabelling in that study, at 55%, followed by the US at 38%.

Capital of China suffers ‘hazardous’ levels of air pollution with authorities issuing second-highest safety alert

A massive sandstorm has combined with already high air pollution to turn the skies in Beijing an eerie orange, and send some air quality measurements off the charts.

Air quality indexes recorded a “hazardous” 999 rating on Monday as commuters travelled to work through the thick, dark air across China’s capital and further west.

Urgent protections sought as report finds some species, which get caught in trawl nets, may never recover

At least four species of shark and skates unique to Australia are at an extreme risk of extinction unless urgent protections are put in place, according to a new report from conservationists.

All four species – the whitefin swellshark, Sydney skate, grey skate and greeneye spurdog – spend their lives on the ocean floor but get caught in trawl nets.

Government had little success getting local unemployed to fill critical shortages as citrus season looms

About 1,200 South Pacific fruit pickers are expected to arrive in South Australia to help fill critical shortages of seasonal agriculture workers.

The SA government’s attempts to encourage unemployed locals to take up fruit picking jobs failed to attract enough workers.

A study by the Yarra Riverkeeper Association found about half the litter in the river was expanded polystyrene

On a two-kilometre stretch of the Yarra River east of Melbourne’s CBD a few years ago, volunteers were gathering rubbish from the banks and reeds.

Among all the discarded bottles and bits of plastic sucked up with an oversized vacuum were an estimated 5 million pieces of expanded polystyrene – some in the form of tiny white balls, others in chunks at various stages of disintegration.

Woman, 63, taken to hospital after being bitten on hip and back

A 63-year-old woman has been taken to hospital after being bitten by a shark at Merimbula’s main beach.

The woman was bitten on her hip and back at about 7am on Saturday.

Exclusive: Government review finds no companies have been investigated or penalised over packaging in the past four years

Australia is likely to miss all of its own targets to rid the environment of plastic unless there is a major overhaul of its management and enforcement, conservationists and waste industry representatives say.

A government review found no state or territory had investigated or penalised a company over their performance on packaging waste in the past four years.

The Biden administration is calling out politicians, like the prime minister, who pay lip service to the climate emergency while peddling greenwash policies

It must have seemed a clever Johnsonian ruse. Build a deep coalmine – the first in decades – in Labour’s historical heartland and put yourself on the side of working-class northern voters who want jobs and against environmentalists who, one could slyly suggest, prefer saving the planet than local communities. Boris Johnson thought, no doubt, with a cunning that has wrongfooted many opponents, that he could frame the argument in such terms and still meet his “net zero” targets because the vast majority of Cumbrian coal would end up for export rather than domestic use (it’s too sulphurous to be used to make steel in Britain). The result is that the greenhouse gas emissions would end up on some other nation’s books when carbon budgets were calculated. Not dissimilar to his view of cake, Mr Johnson was saying that his policy on coal is “pro having it and pro heating it”.

The problem for Mr Johnson was that the Biden administration was having none of it. The US had the good sense to understand the implications if Britain was allowed to press ahead with a plan to dig out coal and send it abroad without busting its own carbon budget. If everyone took the same view, the world would be toast. The US reasons that if jobs are the issue, then use state investment in green technologies for coal-free steel. Within days of John Kerry, the US climate envoy, warning Mr Johnson that coal has no future, the government conceded it would be “calling in” the planning application for the Cumbrian mine. Importantly Mr Johnson would not be shamed into a U-turn in the run-up to the UN’s Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in November.