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Australian cities to have 50C summer days by 2040, study says

Researchers say Sydney and Melbourne would have unprecedented temperatures even if Paris target met

Even if the Paris agreement to limit the global temperature rise to below 2C is met, summer heatwaves in major Australian cities are likely to reach highs of 50C by 2040, a study published on Wednesday warns.

Researchers led by the Australian National University in Canberra used observational data and simulated climate models to assess future extreme weather events in New South Wales and Victoria. They examined what these weather extremes might look like even if the Paris agreement target of limiting climate change to a 2C increase is met.

Related: Former weather bureau chief says agency debilitated by climate deniers' attacks

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Catholic church to make record divestment from fossil fuels

More than 40 Catholic institutions will make largest ever faith-based divestment, on the anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi

More than 40 Catholic institutions are to announce the largest ever faith-based divestment from fossil fuels, on the anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi.

The sum involved has not been disclosed but the volume of divesting groups is four times higher than a previous church record, and adds to a global divestment movement, led by investors worth $5.5tn.

Related: The biggest story in the world podcast: Episode 9, Religion

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Why the 97% climate consensus is important | Dana Nuccitelli, John Cook, Sander van der Linden, Tony Leiserowitz, Ed Maibach

Some have argued that consensus messaging is counter-productive. Here’s why they’re wrong.

Unfortunately, humans don’t have infinite brain capacity, so no one can become an expert on every subject. But people have found ways to overcome our individual limitations through social intelligence, for example by developing and paying special attention to the consensus of experts. Modern societies have developed entire institutions to distill and communicate expert consensus, ranging from national academies of science to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Assessments of scientific consensus help us tap the collective wisdom of a crowd of experts. In short, people value expert consensus as a guide to help them navigate an increasingly complex and risk-filled world.

More generally, consensus is an important process in society. Human cooperation, from small groups to entire nations, requires some degree of consensus, for example on shared goals and the best means to achieve those goals. Indeed, some biologists have argued that “human societies are unable to function without consensus.” Neurological evidence even suggests that when people learn that they are in agreement with experts, reward signals are produced in the brain. Importantly, establishing consensus in one domain (e.g. climate science) can serve as a stepping stone to establishing consensus in other domains (e.g. need for climate policy).

the public have already heard enough about the scientific evidence to make up their mind, without being fed increasingly esoteric information about levels of scientific agreement … valuable media and political attention has been expended on boosting the 97% meme, crowding out deeper conversations about policy framing

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John Akomfrah: ‘Progress can cause profound suffering’

For the British artist, global warming, the subject of his ambitious new video installation, is a process rooted in technology and exploitation

John Akomfrah grew up in the 1960s, in the shadow of Battersea power station in south London. As a child, he remembers “feeling as if I was enveloped in something whenever I played on the street. You could sense it in the air, you felt it and saw it, whatever was emanating from the huge chimneys. We were being poisoned as we played, but no one spoke about it. The conversations in the pub tended to be about football rather than carbon monoxide poisoning.”

Fifty years on, the local has become the global. Akomfrah’s latest art work, Purple, is an immersive, six-channel video installation that attempts to evoke the incremental effects of climate change on our planet. Shot in 10 countries and drawing on archive footage, spoken word and music alongside often epic shots of contemporary landscapes that have been altered by global warming and rising temperatures, Purple eschews a linear narrative for an almost overwhelming montage of imagery and sound.

Related: John Akomfrah: 'I haven’t destroyed this country. There's no reason other immigrants would'

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Delving deeper into the BBC’s idea of impartiality | Letters

Readers respond to Nick Robinson’s recent Guardian article about the mainstream media winning back trust

Nick Robinson’s article asserting that Nigel Lawson should be corrected but not silenced by the BBC on climate change (Silencing the disagreeable won’t work. Put them on air, 28 September) suggests that he and his colleagues are still ignoring the potential harm caused by the broadcast of misinformation to their audiences. Lord Lawson has a track record of misleading the public about climate change. His lobby group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, was found in 2014 to have breached Charity Commission rules by promoting climate change denial. In the same year, the BBC upheld a complaint after Lord Lawson made inaccurate and misleading claims about climate change on the Today programme on Radio 4.

The BBC is now considering a complaint from me and others about further false claims by Lord Lawson on Today in August. In particular, the BBC needs to recognise that his erroneous assertion that extreme weather events are not increasing in frequency or intensity endangered listeners by creating the false impression that they need not respond to the rising risks of heatwaves and flooding from heavy rainfall in the UK. The BBC should properly weigh up the rights of marginal voices like Lord Lawson to mislead its audiences about the risks they face against the rights of its audiences to receive accurate information about those risks.Bob WardGrantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, LSE

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Methane emissions from cattle are 11% higher than estimated

Bigger livestock in larger numbers in more regions has led to methane in the air climbing faster than predicted due to ‘out-of-date data’

Emissions of the greenhouse gas methane from livestock are larger than previously thought, posing an additional challenge in the fight to curb global warming, scientists have said.

Revised calculations of methane produced per head of cattle show that global livestock emissions in 2011 were 11% higher than estimates based on data from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).

Related: 'Wow, no cow': the Swedish farmer using oats to make milk

Related: Global carbon emissions stood still in 2016, offering climate hope

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Companies' ‘zero deforestation’ pledges: everything you need to know

Corporations globally have made hundreds of commitments on deforestation. But what do these pledges really mean and why do scandals keep happening?

Whether it’s the destruction of rainforest shared by elephants and orangutans in Sumatra to produce palm oil; reports linking fast food giants to the burning of tropical forests in Brazil and Bolivia; or the hundreds of thousands of hectares of tree cover loss per year in West Africa – the world’s forests are being razed to sate global demand for produce such as palm oil, beef and cocoa.

As of March 2017, 447 companies had made 760 commitments to curb forest destruction in supply chains linked to palm oil, soy, timber and pulp, and cattle – principal forest-risk commodities – according to NGO Forest Trends. But what does this mean? And why do deforestation scandals keep emerging?

Related: Alarm as study reveals world’s tropical forests are huge carbon emission source

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Spacewatch: twin research satellites head for burn-out

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment has revealed ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica and mapped water levels in the Yangtze river

A pair of German-American Earth observation satellites are due to be retired this November and put on trajectories that will see them burn up in Earth’s atmosphere in 2018.

The two Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) satellites were launched on 17 March 2002 from Plesetsk Cosmodrome, in north-west Russia. They fly in formation, about 140 miles (220km) apart, and measure the gravitational field of the Earth.

Related: New study shows worrisome signs for Greenland ice | John Abraham

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A new shock doctrine: in a world of crisis, morality can still win | Naomi Klein

Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders and Podemos in Spain have shown that a bold and decent strategy can be a successful one. That truth should embolden the left

We live in frightening times. From heads of state tweeting threats of nuclear annihilation, to whole regions rocked by climate chaos, to thousands of migrants drowning off the coasts of Europe, to openly racist parties gaining ground: it feels like there are a lot of reasons to be pessimistic about our collective future.

To take one example, the Caribbean and southern United States are in the midst of an unprecedented hurricane season, pounded by storm after storm. Puerto Rico – hit by Irma, then Maria – is entirely without power and could be for months, its water and communication systems severely compromised. But just as during Hurricane Katrina, the cavalry is missing in action. Donald Trump is too busy trying to get black athletes fired for daring to shine a spotlight on racist violence. A real federal aid package for Puerto Rico has not yet been announced. And the vultures are circling: the business press reports that the only way for Puerto Rico to get the lights back on is to sell off its electricity utility.

Related: Naomi Klein: Trump's like the fatberg – horrible, noxious, hard to dislodge

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Alarm as study reveals world’s tropical forests are huge carbon emission source

Forests globally are so degraded that instead of absorbing emissions they now release more carbon annually than all the traffic in the US, say researchers

The world’s tropical forests are so degraded they have become a source rather than a sink of carbon emissions, according to a new study that highlights the urgent need to protect and restore the Amazon and similar regions.

Researchers found that forest areas in South America, Africa and Asia – which have until recently played a key role in absorbing greenhouse gases – are now releasing 425 teragrams of carbon annually, which is more than all the traffic in the United States.

Related: Amazon rainforest's final frontier in Brazil under threat from oil and soya | John Vidal

Related: How to reduce your carbon footprint #GlobalWarning

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