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An unusually high number of southern right whale deaths along Argentina's Atlantic coast in Patagonia has prompted a scientific investigation.

This week’s Current Climate newsletter also looks at a new push to restore federal funds for electric buses and Corning’s CEO on solar business and carbon capture tech.

They’re transforming cities with million-dollar views and a message of modernity. But climate change makes cooling them tricky and costly.

Weeks before hosting COP31, Turkey is pitching itself as the key route for Gulf oil and gas. Its climate face and its fossil fuel strategy don’t match.

Gondolas on demand, electric piste-grooming and chemical-free snow cannons – how Laax is ‘greenstyling’ its future It’s the worst ski resort nightmare: hillsides of shaggy yellow grass streaked with slush under a leaden sky that’s coughing up sleet. Parts of Europe – places previously accustomed to crisp snow fields and pristine blue skies – are now facing this calamity, something meteorologists might describe as a British winter. Not everywhere, of course. Only lower altitudes are seeing such disasters. Higher up, normal service continues. I’m in the Swiss resort of Laax, where most of the slopes are at about 2,000 metres, lofty enough to be snow-secure, for now. The halfpipe is busy with dudes in baggy trousers and headphones nonchalantly practising their double corks. On the traditional pistes there are four-year-olds who could probably ski before they could walk. And then – Switzerland has its wacky side – three young men in first-world-war greatcoats on antique wooden skis propel themselves with rough-hewn quarter-staves. Continue reading...

Government campaign recommends three days’ worth of stores for emergencies, but some are ahead of the game Dried foods, bottled water, medicine stocks and backup power banks: it could be the props cupboard on a disaster movie, but instead it is precisely what some UK residents are stockpiling amid official warnings about Russian “state-sponsored terrorism” and the impact of the climate crisis. The government launched a campaign on Thursday advising people to set aside three days’ worth of stores to deal with a whole range of eventualities, and some are already well under way. Continue reading...

For skiers looking to reduce their carbon footprint, rail travel from the UK to the Alps has never been quicker or easier. Here’s how to get there Speeding effortlessly towards the slopes by train, you might wonder why you ever flew to a ski resort. On paper, it seems a short hop by plane; in reality, airport queues, cramped flights and long transfers can mean the journey eats up a whole day. Measured door-to-door, daytime rail travel from London can be as fast as flying, while taking a sleeper train gets you extra time on the slopes. And with Alpine glaciers suffering significant loss of snow cover as global temperatures rise, rail travel constitutes the biggest emissions saving a skier can make. Continue reading...

Two environmental groups have sued West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey.

BBC series deliberately uses ‘more organic’ shots to assure viewers animals are not AI-generated, producers say The David Attenborough -narrated series Blue Planet III deliberately includes cloudier, less polished footage to counter AI fakery and assure viewers it is “authentic”, its producers have said. Nearly a decade after Blue Planet II shone a light on plastic pollution, and 25 years since the first Blue Planet aired, the hit BBC series is returning with more animal behaviour and cutting-edge technology, including the world’s first underwater CCTV camera – dubbed “stonefish” cam. Continue reading...

National Geographic’s Wonderlab Snorkel Cam, created by Explorer Anand Varma, captures striking 360-degree views of ocean creatures, including a barnacle-covered mussel and a sea urchin.

UK allies have long urged people to stockpile supplies for a crisis. How are people from France to Australia being advised to prepare? The UK has told people to fill their pantries with food for three days in case of catastrophe, joining a host of countries urging citizens to ready themselves for core systems failing. Such advice, once dismissed as the preserve of preppers , has become more common in government circles as climate breakdown worsens weather extremes and geopolitical tensions turn cyber-attacks and sabotage into a regular occurrence. Continue reading...

It's been an intense hurricane season in the Pacific Ocean, with storms spawning in assembly-line fashion near Hawaii and Mexico as El Niño conditions worsened by global warming create unusual weather.

The Federalist No. 78 promised judicial restraint, but documents reveal climate activists targeted federal judges to influence energy company lawsuits.

At the midpoint of the last century the region had 1,450 glaciers and a new study reveals the extent of losses Continue reading...

When millions of voters fill out their ballots this November, they won’t just be choosing elected representatives. Many states are offering the chance to impact conservation and wildlife as well, through ballot measures focused on things like dedicating more money to habitat protection or mitigating the impacts of climate change. One could even reshape wildlife management […]

Blistering record heat in Europe this summer helped kill more than 50,000 people, with nearly two-thirds of that death toll blamed on human-caused climate change, a new study found.

​As world leaders struggle to meet deadlines to halt nature loss set four years ago, a rare leopard in host country Armenia offers a symbol of what is at stake Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up here The Armenian capital Yerevan is chock-a-block right now with officials, scientists and environmentalists from all over the world gathering for Cop17. Everyone is here to try to rescue a historic deal to end the destruction of nature. The pressure is on. Targets set for 2030 are woefully off track , and the nearly 200 countries present need to agree on a plan to speed things up. All this is happening at a time when national budgets are tight and leaders are distracted by conflict, protests and the global energy crisis. This Norwegian village is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth. How can its people save it? What does the UK’s approval of the Jackdaw gasfield mean? US extreme weather survivors are a growing group – now they want to be a political force Continue reading...

An app and a camera phone are all that’s needed at more than 200 spots to help researchers monitor coastal areas The shoreline changes with the weather. Tracking these changes over time is a labour-intensive task, and an army of citizen scientists with camera phones is a great asset. The CoastSnap project started in Australia in 2017 and has spread to beaches worldwide. You may have spotted the setup while out walking along the coast: a cradle to rest your phone on while taking a picture and a sign explaining where to send the snap. Continue reading...

People succumbed to heat at highest rates in Malta, Italy and Hungary, with health issues, loneliness and poverty exacerbating toll Heat killed a record 50,000 people in European cities this summer, new research suggests, with scientists blaming climate breakdown for two in every three of the deaths. Morgues and funeral homes filled with bodies from June to August as the heat added by planet-baking pollution cut short an extra 32,000 lives in urban areas, the researchers found. Hot days pushed vulnerable bodies into overdrive and warm nights prevented them from recovering. Continue reading...

The world's coral reef ecosystems almost all face a high risk of collapse in the next 50 years, mostly due to warming oceans and heat waves, according to a global assessment released Thursday.

The latest dire UN projection stressed that the ambitions to limit global warming adopted a decade ago in Paris are all but out of reach.

With the climate crisis and diseases threatening one of the world’s most popular fruits, researchers are hoping a breakthrough in breeding techniques could give the Cavendish banana a certain future Love them or loathe them, bananas are one of the world’s most popular fruit . But a combination of the climate crisis and new killer diseases have had growers concerned over the banana’s threatened extinction , something that would impose a huge toll on farmers in countries from Guatemala to Malawi, alongside eradicating a staple food. Now researchers say they have made fresh advances in the race to save them from disaster. This month, Yelloway – a research collaboration between Chiquita, the world’s largest banana company , and the crop-improvement company KeyGene – announced it had developed a fully fertile Cavendish banana, meaning it may be possible, through cross-breeding, to create new banana varieties that are commercially viable and resistant to disease. Continue reading...

Assessment finds global heating is endangering 96% of coral reefs across 80 countries – a figure scientists say should serve as a ‘wake-up call’ Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here Almost every shallow-water coral reef on the planet, including Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, faces a high risk of ecosystem collapse before 2075 because of global heating, according to an assessment by United Nations nature advisers. About 24% of the planet’s reefs across more than 80 countries are already critically endangered, the assessment said, but when the expected impacts of global heating were added this rose to 96%. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Continue reading...

If Flávio Bolsonaro is elected, Brazil’s ecosystems will face collapse. The ruling class would rather burn the world than share it with the poor However grim the trajectory might seem, I’ve always believed that sense will ultimately prevail. As the great perils of dismantling the living world become increasingly obvious, even the most rapacious exploiters must come round. Nobody wants to live on a dead planet, do they? There are – or were – signs that this wasn’t just wishful thinking. Since 2015, mostly thanks to China, the area of the planet being reforested has increased , while thanks in large part to Brazil, the global rate of forest destruction has declined. The area of the Brazilian Amazon forest cleared each year is one-sixth of what it was when records began in 1988. In the past four years, as a result of Brazilian government policy, the deforestation rate has fallen by 71% . If Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is re-elected president on Sunday, the country could reach zero deforestation by 2030. The arc of the moral universe seems to have bent towards justice. Continue reading...

China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment said on Wednesday that it will send a delegation to the COP31 climate conference in Antalya, Turkey, in November to “actively promote the international climate negotiations.” The post World’s Worst Polluter, China, Vows Strong Presence at U.N. Climate Alarmism Summit appeared first on Breitbart .