The Guardian

Shift is caused by the heating of the oceans and other wildlife is suffering more attacks

The climate crisis is pushing great white sharks into new waters where they are causing populations of endangered wildlife to plunge, research has shown.

Heating of the oceans, which reached a record level in 2020, has led young great white sharks to move 600km (373 miles) northwards off the coast of California since 2014, into waters that were previously too cold. Over that time there was a dramatic rise in sea otters killed by white sharks, with the number in Monterey Bay dropping by 86%.

A second tunnel or tunnel network has been occupied by activists in London in a protest against plans by Islington council to fell a range of mature trees.

Activists say the tunnel at Highbury Corner tree protection camp was built by the crew that dug the tunnel at the Euston Square Gardens HS2 protection camp.

• Activists occupy second London tunnel in protest at tree-felling plans
  

Pollution from power plants, vehicles and other sources accounted for one in five of all deaths that year, more detailed analysis reveals

Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible for 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, a staggering one in five of all people who died that year, new research has found.

Countries with the most prodigious consumption of fossil fuels to power factories, homes and vehicles are suffering the highest death tolls, with the study finding more than one in 10 deaths in both the US and Europe were caused by the resulting pollution, along with nearly a third of deaths in eastern Asia, which includes China. Death rates in South America and Africa were significantly lower.

Climate action wreckers who used to rant about real things – carbon pricing, a national energy guarantee – are spouting about policies that don’t even exist

Given Australian politics has transited back to climate change, stupid isn’t really a shock. Stupid is the default.

But even though stupid is to be expected – and stupid always gets supercharged when the Coalition fuses its climate change “debates” with internal leadership tension – I’m still gobsmacked that somehow, over the past 72 hours, we have managed to move to somewhere even dumber. Let me explain what I mean by this.

Oil projects over the next decade would destroy hopes of meeting Paris climate goals, thinktank warns

The world’s state-owned fossil fuel companies are poised to invest about $1.9tn (£1.4tn) in the next decade in projects that would destroy any prospect of meeting the Paris agreement climate goals.

A large proportion of these investments are likely to become stranded assets, with at least $400bn unlikely to be profitable if the world sticks to its promises to hold global heating to less than 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels, according to a report from the Natural Resource Governance Institute thinktank.

Boris Johnson told exploding wartime ordinance to clear way for windfarms can harm marine life

Joanna Lumley has urged Boris Johnson to stop the “needless” detonation of wartime bombs at sea because it can cause deafness and even death in vulnerable whales and dolphins.

In a letter to the prime minister and his fiancee, Carrie Symonds, who is a conservationist and animal welfare campaigner, the actor describes underwater explosions used to clear ordinance ahead of windfarm construction in the UK as “truly shocking in scale”, with a “devastating impact” on marine mammals.

Pollen released by plants is also more intense than in 1990 in bad news for those with allergies, research in US and Canada finds

The climate crisis is multiplying the miseries faced by people with allergies, with new research finding that the pollen season in North America is now an average 20 days longer than it was three decades ago.

Related: How urban planners' preference for male trees has made your hay fever worse

António Guterres says Covid pandemic must not halt preparatory work for key summit in Glasgow

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Governments must step up their efforts ahead of vital climate talks this year by agreeing to negotiate formally online for the first time, the UN secretary general has said.

António Guterres told a meeting of governments and officials on Monday that formal negotiations for the Cop26 summit must be begun virtually owing to the Covid-19 pandemic and the constraints it had placed on governments meeting in person.

Fifteen teams will get $1m to develop ideas, with a $50m prize awaiting the winner

The Tesla co-founder Elon Musk has offered a $100m (£73m) fund for inventions that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or oceans.

Musk, who has built up an estimated $203bn fortune, said he wanted scientists to make a “truly meaningful impact” and achieve “carbon negativity, not neutrality”.

A koala crossing one of South Australia’s busiest freeways led to a six-car collision as drivers abandoned their vehicles to mount a rescue of the 'calm' marsupial.

Nadia Tugwell  joined those trying to help the animal on Adelaide’s South Eastern Freeway near Crafers on Monday morning. 'When it saw me it instantly turned around to run backwards but the other lady was there and so we jumped it, bundled it up, and it ended up in my car because she had children,' Tugwell said.

While she waited for a koala centre rescuer to arrive, the animal made itself at home in her car. The volunteer released the uninjured koala back into the wild 1km from the freeway

Rice’s whales already considered endangered by the US with a population estimated at fewer than 100

Genetic analysis and a close examination of the skulls from a group of baleen whales in the north-eastern Gulf of Mexico have revealed that they are a new species.

“I was surprised that there could be an unrecognized species of whale out there, especially in our backyard,” says Lynsey Wilcox, a geneticist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who helped uncover the new species. “I never imagined I would be describing a new species in my career, so it is a very exciting discovery.”

Researchers use drones to map 30,000 sq metres of Heron Island at high resolution so sea cucumbers can be counted

“In the wee hours of the morning … we weren’t too excited to be spooning poo,” reef ecologist Dr Vincent Raulot says.

But that’s exactly what he and a team of researchers did to calculate out how much poop was excreted by an estimated 3 million sea cucumbers on the 20 sq km Heron Island coral reef in Queensland.

Swedish environmental groups warn test flight could be first step towards the adoption of a potentially “dangerous, unpredictable, and unmanageable” technology

A proposed scientific balloon flight in northern Sweden has attracted opposition from environmental groups over fears it could lead to the use of solar geoengineering to cool the Earth and combat the climate crisis by mimicking the effect of a large volcanic eruption.

In June, a team of Harvard scientists is planning to launch a high-altitude balloon from Kiruna in Lapland to test whether it can carry equipment for a future small-scale experiment on radiation-reflecting particles in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Sorry no weirdly denialist LOSERS allowed

• Sign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are published
• Get all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and prints

Engineers explore using gentle slopes rather than steep dams or mountains to store electricity

Hundreds of hills across the UK could be transformed into renewable energy “batteries” through a pioneering hydropower system embedded underground.

A team of engineers have developed a system that adapts one of the oldest forms of energy storage, hydropower, to store and release electricity from gentle slopes rather than requiring steep dam walls and mountains.

Australia is way behind on vehicle electrification, but there are solutions to help us catch up

Angus Taylor, the minister for emissions reduction, isn’t a stranger to dodgy numbers (just ask Clover Moore), and his latest work, the Future Fuels Strategy, demonstrates his disdain for actually lowering emissions.

The strategy paper misleadingly claims that hybrid vehicles are cleaner than electric vehicles by looking at just the years 2021-25. EVs bought now will enjoy cleaner power with every solar panel and wind turbine connected to the grid. Over a 10-to-15-year life, EVs have notably lower emissions than hybrids, and that’s ignoring the fact that many EV owners charge with solar and all the major fast charge operators use 100% renewable energy – local energy, instead of imported oil.

Covid has battered the industry, and the race for renewables is speeding up. We are at a tipping point

The final months of 2020 were a tough end to a tough year, according to BP’s chief executive. But Bernard Looney’s verdict on the worst financial year in the industry’s history is a devastating understatement. It was a period marked by thousands of job cuts, battered dividend policies and record multibillion-dollar losses.

BP revealed a full-year loss of $18bn, its first since the Deepwater Horizon disaster more than a decade ago, while US oil giant ExxonMobil reported an annual loss of $22.4bn – its first ever. Shell capped a year in which it slashed its dividend for the first time since the second world war with a debit of almost $20bn.

Government says project will create 300 jobs and will test and improve technologies, including a refuelling station for hydrogen vehicles

The Victorian government has given $10m for a hub in Melbourne’s south-east that will test and improve hydrogen technologies.

The hub will be based at Swinburne University of Technology and study both clean energy vehicles and hydrogen storage.

Shining a light on an evil killer is easy and satisfying. It drives the script of the tales in which we absorb ourselves as we retreat from a world become too much

When I was growing up, one of my parents’ favourite albums was a live recording of a Pete Seeger concert called We Shall Overcome. On it was his rendition of a Bob Dylan song called Who Killed Davey Moore. Pete’s voice imploring an answer to that question would ring out from the record player in the living room and across the house.

The song explores the question of who bore responsibility for the death of an African American boxer who was killed in the ring when he was just 30 years old. Each verse begins with the refrain, “Who killed Davey Moore?” In the verse that follows, some group or individual associated with his life and death – the coach, the crowd, the manager, the gambling man, the boxing writer, the other fighter – gives their answer. Each, in turn, responds “Not I”, and explains that they cannot rightfully be accused of killing Davey Moore. They were just doing what it is that they do: going to the fight, organising the fight, writing about the fight, throwing the punches, and so on. And, of course, they are each telling the truth. Or a truth of sorts.

Photographic artist Alex Frayne has shot the landscapes of South Australia for over two decades. His latest book, Landscapes of South Australia, pays homage to its deserts, hills, plains and waters