The Guardian

Wolsingham, Weardale Most hedgerow blackthorns are brutally trimmed but these small trees, unpruned and unharvested by birds, are laden with fruit

In early May, this blackthorn thicket had been smothered in the most spectacular display of blossom that I had ever seen and I made a mental note to return in autumn, to see if it had fulfilled its promise.

I’d intended to return sooner. Now it felt like the first real day of winter, and my breath turned to steam in the icy wind. In the shade of the trees beside the beck, where deep shadows would linger all day, fallen leaves were fringed with frost crystals.

Start to tourism season prompts environment minister to override federal law and allow the nets in NSW

Josh Frydenberg overrode federal law to give the go-ahead to lethal shark nets in northern New South Wales to save the local tourist industry and nipper clubs.

The environment minister has argued that there was a “national interest” in installing the controversial nets because, with the tourism season about to start, surf shops were experiencing decreased sales and nipper clubs had fewer registrations.

Malcolm Turnbull says ‘mechanisms’ to meet 2030 Paris emission reduction targets may need to be examined

Malcolm Turnbull has acknowledged the looming review of the Direct Action climate policy in 2017 “may result in some changes” to the federal renewable energy target.

The prime minister’s hedged observation on Thursday morning comes ahead of the release of the preliminary findings of the Finkel energy security review determining whether the national electricity market can deliver reliable base load power while meeting Australia’s climate change commitments.

Variable speed limits, removal of speed bumps and ‘no idling’ zones near schools among recommendations

Speed bumps should be removed, speed limits made variable on England’s motorways, sometimes dropping as low as 50mph, and a congestion charge considered in more cities to cut air pollution and save lives, health experts have said.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) released a series of recommendations on Thursday which it said would “promote a smoother driving style” and help keep emissions down.

Greg Clark welcomes 700-job factory, the first to produce 75m-long blades for a new generation of offshore windfarms

The first 75-metre-long blades destined for windfarms off the UK’s coast will roll out of a factory in Hull when it officially opens on Thursday.

The inauguration of the Siemens plant at the city’s Alexandra Dock employs 700 people and was hailed by campaigners as an example of how curbing carbon emissions could create jobs.

Victorian woman spends two days in hospital after being stung on neck off Fitzroy Island

A female snorkeller is lucky to be alive after suffering heart failure following an Irukandji jellyfish sting in far north Queensland.

The 39-year-old Victorian woman was snorkelling off Fitzroy Island last Friday when she was stung on the neck by the deadly, thumbnail-sized jellyfish.

The Thylacine Awareness Group is ‘dedicated to the research, recognition and conservation of our most elusive apex predator’ – officially extinct since 1936

Six years ago Neil Waters moved to Tasmania. There, he says, he had a “brief encounter” with a thylacine, the carnivorous marsupial known as the Tasmanian tiger, declared extinct in 1986.

Two years later, in January 2014, he was doing work on his house when a smaller animal walked up a dirt track leading out of a tin mine and past his bedroom window.

New analysis of nine species that ‘walk’ by night on shallow reefs shows their range is much smaller than was known

Bizarre “walking sharks” are at a greater risk of extinction than previously thought, with new information about their distribution leading researchers to expect greater efforts to protect them from human threats such as fishing and climate change.

Bamboo sharks include nine species of sharks that swim and “walk” in shallow waters around northern Australia, Papua New Guinea and parts of Indonesia. In 2013 a new species of the genus was found in Indonesia.

A new analysis shows these bizarre creatures have much smaller distributions than previously thought, making them more vulnerable to human pressures such as fishing and climate change. The findings could spark greater protections

‘We will make China a beautiful country with blue sky, green vegetation and clear rivers,’ vowed President Xi Jinping in September. But these haunting photographs by the award-winning Canadian photojournalist Kevin Frayer, who travelled to Inner Mongolia to witness the activities of unauthorised steel mills, underline the scale of Beijing’s challenge to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels

UK’s two largest supermarket chains will replace the plastic stems with paper ones in all own-brand products by the end of 2017

The UK’s two largest supermarket chains have committed to end the sale of cotton buds with plastic stems, which are the most common litter from toilets flushed on to the country’s beaches.

Both Tesco and Sainsbury’s will replace the plastic stick with paper by the end of 2017 in their own-brand products.

Barack Obama has been called the first ‘climate president’ for acknowledging the real threat of global warming. But work by Columbia University and the Guardian shows that Obama’s climate record has been badly tarnished by investments made in dirty fuels around the world

• How Obama’s climate change legacy is weakened by US investment in dirty fuel

Exclusive: an agency inside the Obama administration poured billions into fossil fuel projects that will lead to global carbon emissions of a damaging scale

President Barack Obama has staked his legacy on the environment, positioning his administration as the most progressive on climate change in US history.

However, an obscure agency within his own administration has quietly spoiled his record by helping fund a steady outpouring of new overseas fossil fuel emissions – effectively erasing gains expected from his headline clean power plan or fuel efficiency standards.

Plan to cut energy use by 30% before 2030 forms centrepiece of package to help EU meet its Paris climate commitments

Europe will phase out coal subsidies and cut its energy use by 30% before the end of the next decade, under a major clean energy package announced in Brussels on Wednesday.

The 1,000 page blueprint to help the EU meet its Paris climate commitments also pencils in measures to cut electricity bills, boost renewable energies and limit use of unsustainable bioenergies.

While Trump claims to be open-minded on climate, there are ominous signs that Republicans will try to slash climate research

Last week, Donald Trump’s space policy advisor Bob Walker made headlines by suggesting that the incoming administration might slash Nasa’s climate and earth science research to focus the agency on deep space exploration. This caused great concern in the scientific community, because Nasa does some of the best climate research in the world, and its Earth science program does much more. Walker suggested the earth science research could be shifted to other agencies, but climate scientist Michael Mann explained what would result:

It’s difficult enough for us to build and maintain the platforms that are necessary for measuring how the oceans are changing, how the atmosphere is changing, with the infrastructure that we have when we total up the contributions from all of the agencies ... we [could] lose forever the possibility of the continuous records that we need so that we can monitor this planet.

Gunnislake, Tamar Valley Barges that carried coal, corn, manure, granite, bricks and lime had to be hauled manually upstream against the current

From the hilltop railway station, rain clouds veil sight of Dartmoor and, in nearby Stony Lane, run-off flows between shoals of sodden beech leaves. Down this sunken way towards the river, ferns, mosses and pennywort show green under the tangle of fading bramble, yellow-leafed hazel and bare sycamore; the enclosing hedge-banks frame occasional glimpses across the valley where steep woodland engulfs river-cliffs and pinnacles like Chimney Rock.

Sound of water roaring over the weir carries uphill and becomes even louder below Hatches Green, where tennis court and football pitch in King George’s Field are overlooked by the orange and dark green deciduous and coniferous woods opposite – once part of the Duke of Bedford’s estate.

In Kenya 1.3 million people are facing serious food insecurity and loss of livelihoods as a result of poor rainfall. As the next dry season approaches, one insurance scheme is using satellite data to support some of east Africa’s most vulnerable. Photographs by ILRI.

Many state schools struggling to help disadvantaged pupils (Report, 22 November) are facing a further demand on their shrinking budgets. Prudent schools that have invested in solar panels to reduce their electricity bills now face a retrospective six- to eight-fold hike in their tax rates, if the government gets its way. This would be socially divisive, as it will apply to state schools but not to the private schools that have charitable status. The higher rates will also apply to businesses and other organisations that use solar electricity internally. This is yet another blow to the solar industry, already reeling from four separate subsidy cuts since May 2015. UK solar had been expanding exponentially, creating many new jobs and reducing both the wholesale price of electricity and our carbon emissions.
Emeritus Professor Keith Barnham
London

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Exclusive: ‘Confidential’ draft acknowledges coral bleaching but does not make any attempt to address climate change

The Australian government’s official “response plan” to the worst ever bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef commits it to no new action, pledges no new money and does not make any attempt to address climate change, according to a draft seen by the Guardian.

The Northern Great Barrier Reef Response Plan, marked “draft” and “confidential”, begins by describing the bleaching event as “the worst ever coral bleaching” and attributes its cause to climate change.

Queenstown, on the remote west coast of Tasmania, is known for two things: copper mining and the harsh gravel oval that is home to the local Australian rules football team. A series of deaths at the Mount Lyell mine brought operations to a standstill and put the future of the town in doubt. Thomas Hyland’s evocative film, shown here after screenings at the Unconformity festival, tracks the story of the town, the people and their football team through shock, grief and change
• Devastation and beauty collide in Tasmanian mining town