Cross-party backing likely for amendment to GB Energy bill aiming to block solar panels made by Uyghur forced labour
The government is facing defeat next week over a move to guarantee that companies using forced labour do not drive the UK’s green energy transition.
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have thrown their weight behind an amendment by the cross-bench peer David Alton to the GB Energy bill, which is making its way through the House of Lords.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
02/04/2025 - 13:32
02/04/2025 - 12:31
Prof James Hansen says pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated though other scientists disagree
The pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, according to renowned climate scientist Prof James Hansen, who said the international 2C target is “dead”.
A new analysis by Hansen and colleagues concludes that both the impact of recent cuts in sun-blocking shipping pollution, which has raised temperatures, and the sensitivity of the climate to increasing fossil fuels emissions are greater than thought.
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02/04/2025 - 12:19
Deprived of Rachel Reeves’s affections, the energy secretary revelled in playing climate crisis hero to her villain
He lives!
They seek him here! They seek him there! For the last 10 days or so, Ed Miliband has been the Invisible Man. A large number of the cabinet were in Oxfordshire for Rachel Reeves’s growth speech last Wednesday. Ed was not.
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02/04/2025 - 11:39
Scientists say unusually mild temperatures linked to low-pressure system over Iceland directing strong flow of warm air towards north pole
Temperatures at the north pole soared more than 20C above average on Sunday, crossing the threshold for ice to melt.
Temperatures north of Svalbard in Norway had already risen to 18C hotter than the 1991–2020 average on Saturday, according to models from weather agencies in Europe and the US, with actual temperatures close to water’s melting point of 0C. By Sunday, the temperature anomaly had risen to more than 20C.
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02/04/2025 - 10:09
Just 9,119 were counted in 2024 – down 96% on previous year and second-lowest mark in nearly three decades
The number of monarch butterflies spending the winter in the western United States has dropped to its second-lowest mark in nearly three decades as pesticides, diminishing habitat and the climate crisis take their toll on the beloved pollinator.
The butterflies, known for their distinctive orange-and-black wings, are found across North America. Monarchs in the eastern US spend their winters in Mexico, while monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains typically overwinter along the California coast.
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02/04/2025 - 09:46
Scientists taking samples from city’s river did not expect to find presence of under-threat molluscs
Traces of rare mussels sensitive to pollution and thought to be on the point of extinction in France have been discovered in the Seine in Paris, raising hopes that efforts to clean up the river that bisects the French capital might be succeeding.
The findings were made after Olympic swimming events were held in the Seine last year – the first time swimming in the river has been deemed safe in a century.
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02/04/2025 - 07:05
Video posted online is said to show Trump Jr with a ruddy shelduck while on hunting trip
Donald Trump Jr has been accused of killing a protected duck while hunting in the Venice lagoon.
Andrea Zanoni, a regional counsellor in Veneto, said a video of a hunting trip in northern Italy showed Trump Jr with the body of a rare ruddy shelduck (Tadorna ferruginea).
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02/04/2025 - 05:35
Mountaineers now scaling more peaks for first global study of nanoplastics, which can enter lungs and bloodstream
Particles from vehicle tyre wear are the biggest source of nanoplastic pollution in the high Alps, a pioneering project has revealed.
Expert mountaineers teamed up with scientists to collect contamination-free samples and are now scaling peaks to produce the first global assessment of nanoplastics, which are easily carried around the world by winds.
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02/04/2025 - 01:00
As commercial monocultures increase, ecologists are calling for the remaining splinters of native woodland to be identified, protected - and expanded
Photographs by Rob Stothard
“This could almost be part of Lapland, up here,” says retired researcher John Spence, approaching a clearing in the Correl Glen nature reserve in Fermanagh, near Northern Ireland’s land border with the county of Leitrim. “You could make a Nordic movie here and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
Spence pauses to point out oak, hazel, birch, ash and alder trees, along with a series of rare “filmy” ferns, wild strawberry bushes and honeysuckle. There are well over 100 species of lichen in this small patch of temperate rainforest alone.
A path leads towards a sitka spruce forest in Glenboy, near Manorhamilton, in Leitrim
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02/04/2025 - 00:00
Open-net farms to continue despite numbers of wild fish halving as minister looks for ‘acceptable’ pollution levels
Norway’s environment minister has ruled out a ban on open-net fish farming at sea despite acknowledging that the wild North Atlantic salmon is under “existential threat”.
With yearly exports of 1.2m tonnes, Norway is the largest producer of farmed salmon in the world. But its wild salmon population has fallen from more than a million in the early 1980s to about 500,000 today.
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