The Guardian

Experts say council funding shortfalls mean many old landfills not being dealt with appropriately

Hundreds of landfills around the UK containing hazardous waste are located beneath green spaces, schools and housing, analysis of official data has found.

Experts say authorities are “setting themselves up for a large sequence of nasty surprises” if the toxic substances were to escape, with council funding shortfalls meaning many sites are not being dealt with appropriately. The contents of hundreds of sites remain unknown even to the Environment Agency (EA).

Thought at first to be a racing pigeon posing a biosecurity risk, Joe could be free as a bird after suggestion of mistaken identity

Australia’s Department of Agriculture is making inquiries after the American Pigeon Racing Union claimed that Joe, a pigeon that was thought to have travelled to Australia from the US, is actually a fraud – a revelation that may well save his life.

The public rallied to the defence of Joe after Australian agricultural authorities said he would be euthanised to prevent the risk of diseases from the US being transmitted to Australian native birds.

Researchers counted particles in seaballs that washed up on beaches in Spain

Underwater seagrass in coastal areas appear to trap plastic pollution in natural bundles of fibre known as “Neptune balls”, researchers have found.

With no help from humans, the swaying plants – anchored to shallow seabeds – may collect nearly 900m plastic items in the Mediterranean alone every year, a study reported in the journal Scientific Reports said.

NSW environment minister Matt Kean to declare ‘dinosaur trees’ an asset of international significance

The world’s only known natural stand of Wollemi pines has become the first site in New South Wales to be given special protected status to try to ensure its survival for future generations.

The environment minister, Matt Kean, will declare the so-called “dinosaur trees” an asset of intergenerational significance after heroic efforts by remote area firefighters in the Blue Mountains world heritage area saved the pines during the 2019-20 bushfire disaster.

Due to different methods, US Noaa judged year as fractionally cooler than 2016 while UK Met Office put 2020 in close second place

Last year was by a narrow margin the hottest ever on record, according to Nasa, with the climate crisis stamping its mark on 2020 through soaring temperatures, enormous hurricanes and unprecedented wildfires.

The average global land and ocean temperature in 2020 was the highest ever measured, Nasa announced on Thursday, edging out the previous record set in 2016 by less than a tenth of a degree.

Environmental groups blast state government for failure to penalise Chevron’s Gorgon plant for increased greenhouse gas emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions from Chevron’s Gorgon LNG facility have increased because the company’s carbon capture system is not working properly, meaning more carbon dioxide is being vented into the atmosphere.

Environment groups have blasted the Western Australian government for not imposing penalties on the energy company after documents revealed sand was clogging the injection system designed to bury up to 4m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year under Barrow Island.

Report says not enough funding is being made available to deal with effects of extreme weather

Millions of people around the world are facing disaster from flood, droughts, heatwaves and other extreme weather, as governments fail to take the measures needed to adapt to the impacts of climate breakdown, the UN has warned.

Nearly three-quarters of countries around the world have recognised the need to plan for the effects of global heating, but few of those plans are adequate to the rising threat, and little funding has been made available to put them into force, according to the UN environment programme’s Adaptation report 2020, published on Thursday.

Amateur photographer Derry Moroney lives on the mid-corth coast of New South Wales in the community of Brooms Head. For the past three years he has been photographing landscapes, animals and insects. ‘With our pristine beaches and Yuraygir national park on my doorstep, I really didn’t have to travel very far,’ he says.

In July 2020 Moroney followed the water upstream from the estuary at Brooms Head and stumbled on to Lake Cakora. Using his drone he captured stunning images of arboreal-like drainage channels in Lake Cakora. ‘The tea trees along the banks colour the water running off into the lake after a big storm,’ he says, describing the patterns as ‘like a tree of life’.

You can see more of his work on Instagram at @derry_moroney_photography

More of the insects have emerged this year in NSW, Victoria and South Australia. One reason is rainfall

The buzz call of the cicada is a familiar sound of the Australian summer and this season is what David Emery calls a “super year for our summer chorusing friends”.

A veterinary immunologist at the University of Sydney and cicada expert, Emery has been monitoring the insects for decades and, along with many residents of coastal New South Wales and beyond, has registered that the volume is more ear-splitting than usual.

Illustration of activist is part of a series highlighting government’s environmental quality goals

The environmental activist Greta Thunberg has been featured on a new Swedish postage stamp, in recognition of her work to “preserve Sweden’s unique nature for future generations”.

Thunberg, who turned 18 on 3 January, is pictured standing on a rocky cliff top wearing a yellow raincoat, with swifts flying around her, as part of a set by the artist and illustrator Henning Trollbäck titled Valuable Nature.

Project using large beasts to help restore woodland offers unprecedented job opportunity

Can you handle a beast as heavy as a small car, that can hurdle high fences from a standing start, and is a peaceful bulldozer for biodiversity?

If you’re not intimidated by the weightiest wild land mammal in Europe, you could become Britain’s first ever bison ranger.

Scientists say temperatures likely to be increasing faster than at any time in past 2,000 years

• Analysis: why are ocean warming records being broken year after year?

The world’s oceans reached their hottest level in recorded history in 2020, supercharging the extreme weather impacts of the climate emergency, scientists have reported.

More than 90% of the heat trapped by carbon emissions is absorbed by the oceans, making their warmth an undeniable signal of the accelerating crisis. The researchers found the five hottest years in the oceans had occurred since 2015, and that the rate of heating since 1986 was eight times higher than that from 1960-85.

When Taal volcano, a popular tourist site in Batangas, erupted a year ago 5,000 people fled the island. It’s still considered dangerous. The government bans former residents from returning but some still live there in tents

One of these compact little waders has been hanging around my patch for a year, but it’s not easy to spot

Some rare birds stay put for just a few hours; others stick around for months, or even years. But that doesn’t always make them easy to see.

Since a Kentish plover was first found in Somerset on Boxing Day 2019, it has been seen occasionally on Stert Island, opposite my coastal patch. It disappeared for the summer, then returned in October to spend the winter with a flock of ringed plovers. But at a distance, it can be very hard to pick out.

Exclusive: applications to explore Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre basin submitted by energy company last July but previously unreported

The energy company Origin wants to search for fossil fuels across 225,000 hectares of the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre basin in Queensland’s channel country – part of one of the world’s biggest free-flowing river systems.

The company is waiting to hear if the Queensland government will grant the applications for 10 petroleum leases, which were submitted in July last year but have not been previously reported.

A male White's seahorse has been filmed giving birth to dozens of babies ... yes, a father giving birth. Seahorse females deposit their eggs into a pouch in the front of the males, where the eggs are fertilised.

More than 100 seahorse babies have been born in a Sydney aquarium as part of a captive breeding program to help save the endangered White's seahorse. The breeding program is a collaboration between Sea Life Sydney Aquarium, Fisheries NSW and the University of Technology Sydney

WWF report finds area six times the size of Tasmania has been cleared globally since 2004

Australia remains one of the world’s hotspots for deforestation according to a new report by WWF, which finds an area six times the size of Tasmania has been cleared globally since 2004.

The analysis identifies 24 “deforestation fronts” worldwide where a total of 43 million hectares of forest was destroyed in the period from 2004 until 2017.

A £2.5m scheme in the Skell Valley hopes to protect Fountains Abbey and the city of Ripon

Fountains Abbey, near Ripon, North Yorkshire, was originally set up by 13 Benedictine monks seeking refuge from the more extravagant, rowdy monks in York. Eight hundred years later, the abbey ruins and its gardens face another threat: the climate crisis.

The Skell Valley, where the ruins stand, has been flooded several times in recent years, raising fears that the UK’s largest monastic ruins are at risk of irreparable damage. Now a £2.5m National Trust project – aided by a £1.4m lottery grant – has been greenlit to improve the landscape’s resilience to changing weather.

Choose your favourite photo from entrants in BirdLife Australia’s annual photography awards. From a hungry fairy tern to a thirsty corella, the best images from photographers across Australia have been entered into this year’s prize. Voting will run until Friday 22 January.

• This year’s Guardian/Bird Life Australia bird of the year poll will run from 27 September

• View all categories of the 2020 BirdLife Australia Photography awards here and find out about volunteering here

But emissions reductions came at huge cost and will likely rebound as vaccines are distributed, authors of report say

Planet-heating emissions in the US fell by more than 10% in 2020, a record drop generated by extraordinary reductions in travel and industrial activity in the teeth of the coronavirus pandemic, new figures show.

The historic jolt to American life, which has resulted in more than 375,000 deaths and a huge surge in joblessness, caused many states to impose travel restrictions and curbs on business activity. This resulted in greenhouse gas emissions dropping by 10.3% last year, according to a new estimate by Rhodium Group.