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Have you ever seen a headless toad? If the answer is no, now is a good time to go out looking for one. You see, it is almost exactly at this time of year that they are becoming headless thanks to the actions of tiny parasites that are emerging from out of their bodies. It is with these creatures that I would like to begin this piece about the worthiness or worthlessness of parasites.
Related: Climate change could wipe out a third of parasite species, study finds
Would this be a poorer world without the humble toadfly?
Continue reading...As in any emergency, women are most affected by the drought in Somaliland. There is much that Australia could learn from how they respond to the disaster
For three years now, Somaliland, like much of East Africa, has experienced extreme drought. Drought that has become more and more severe, until earlier this year, with thousands on the brink of starvation, the government of Somaliland declared a national emergency.
The crisis should serve as a warning to the rest of the world to prepare – and prepare well – for extreme weather events, which are occurring with greater frequency and ferocity than ever before.
Related: Somaliland's hunger crisis: ‘The world doesn't respond until children are dying'
Related: Drought took their animals and land – now hunger is taking Somalia's children
Continue reading...Australia’s overall greenhouse gas emissions last financial year were the highest since 2011, despite the closure of the Hazelwood coal-fired power plant
Emissions from the electricity sector in the three months to June dropped by the biggest amount on record, as the effect of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station closure is seen for the first time in quarterly projections produced exclusively for the Guardian.
But even that drop wasn’t enough to stop Australia’s overall greenhouse gas emissions from continuing to rise. Emissions from almost every other sector – industrial energy, transport, industrial heat and agriculture – all rose. They are the highest levels seen since before the carbon tax was repealed, according to projections by consultants at Ndevr Environmental.
Continue reading...6.25pm BST
6.08pm BST
The Miami station of the National Weather Station has issued a dire warning for the potential effects of the storm on southern Florida, in particular tornado-force winds and huge storm surges.
The main window of concern for hurricane Irma, impacts is early Saturday morning through Monday. Additional concerns exist for flooding rains, isolated tornadoes, significant beach erosion and surf, coastal flooding, and life-threatening rip currents.
Wind: prepare for life-threatening wind having possible devastating impacts across south Florida. Potential impacts include:
Surge: prepare for life-threatening surge having possible devastating impacts across coastal Collier, mainland Monroe, coastal Miami-Dade counties, including Biscayne Bay.
5.56pm BST
Donald Trump has said he believes the United States is ready for hurricane Irma, telling reporters, “we think we are as well prepare as we could possibly be.”
Yet he still admitted uncertainty about what will actually happening, as he did on Wednesday, by saying Irma “looks like it could be something that will be not good, believe me, not good.”
5.47pm BST
French officials have cast doubt on the number of fatalities on the territory of St Martin, saying they have confirmed four deaths but not the eight reported by local officials previously. The AFP reports:
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Thursday that four people were confirmed dead on the Caribbean island of St Martin ravaged by Hurricane Irma.
Local rescue officials and Interior Minister Gerard Collomb had previously said the death toll stood at eight.
5.22pm BST
On its current course, hurricane Irma is predicted to pass directly over, or quite close to, the British territories of Turk and Caicos on Thursday night, followed by a brush with the southern islands of the Bahamas and Cuba’s northern coast.
On Friday night, the hurricane is expected to land at or pass near the archipelago of the Florida Keys, an area ordered evacuated by the state’s governor, Rick Scott.
5.12pm BST
Fuel has become such a scarcity in south Florida, and such a priority for governor Rick Scott, that police are escorting tankers and managing gas station service.
Scott said he wanted to avoid the lapses of hurricane Andrew: enough fuel to evacuate, to supply power during the storm, and to speed up the recovery in its aftermath.
How important is gas in South #Florida ahead of #HurricaneIrma?Tankers are getting escorts by law enforcement. @WPTV pic.twitter.com/6D98e3bA36
Troopers are directing traffic again at the West Palm Beach Service Plaza as drivers rush to get gas @CBS12 pic.twitter.com/1Wb9HnHhB6
4.53pm BST
The National Weather Service branch of the Florida Keys have warned in the most severe terms that everyone should leave the archipelago, saying in a midday advisory that hurricane conditions are possible within the next 48 hours.
From the advisory:
4.41pm BST
Florida governor Rick Scott has activated 3,000 members of the state national guard, with plans to activate the entire state force – 7,000 people in all – on Friday.
“We are expecting our state to have major impacts from Hurricane Irma and we are taking aggressive actions to make sure Florida is prepared,” Scott said in a statement. “These men and women are putting themselves in harm’s way to save the lives of their fellow Floridians while many of their own families are evacuating. I am proud of their commitment to keeping our families safe.”
UPDATE: We have run out of sandbags at 79 ST & Collins Avenue. If you are still in need, go to 5 ST & Ocean Dr. #HurricaneIrma
4.36pm BST
Hurricane Irma killed three people as it battered Puerto Rico, with a 79-year-old woman, a younger woman, and a man among the fatalities.
In a statement, governor Ricardo Rossello said that the elderly woman, who needed assistance moving, died after a fall en route to a shelter. A younger woman died in Camuy, on the north-west coast of the island, from electrocution in her home, and a man died from a traffic accident in Canóvanas, in the north-east.
4.23pm BST
For the first time in seven years, there are currently three active hurricanes in the Atlantic:
11:00 AM AST Advisory/Advertencia #9: Hurricane/Huracán José. #prwx #usviwx pic.twitter.com/Fi075N8vO4
4.10pm BST
More than a million people in Puerto Rico still lack power, the AP reports, accounting for about 70% of the territory’s Electric Power Authority. There are about 3.4 million people on the island.
Puerto Rican governor Ricardo Rossello said Thursday that crews are investigating and until they know the extent of the damage, “it will be difficult to estimate how long the power outage will last.”
Rossello added that ports on the island are still closed, and it’s unclear when commercial flights will resume. Schools and government offices are scheduled to reopen on Monday.
4.00pm BST
The major counties of south Florida – Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Colliers – have been declared under a hurricane watch by state officials. Irma is currently maintaining winds of about 175mph, well above the 74mph minimum for hurricane winds, and officials fear five to 10ft storm surges for southern coastal parts of the peninsula.
11 AM Thursday #Irma update. Winds down to 175 mph. Still headed WNW at 16 mph. Forecast remains for FL impacts Sunday. #WESHwx pic.twitter.com/ajNQaIDvGD
Monroe County officials say @FLGovScott gave out wrong number for Florida Emergency Hotline. Correct one is 800-342-3557.
3.43pm BST
Shipping containers and boats piled up like toys, city blocks leveled, and buildings stripped of whole faces are just a few of the images published online by the Dutch ministry of defense from a helicopter flyby.
The extent of damage, injuries, and possible deaths remains unknown from Dutch St Maarten; at least eight people were killed on the French side of the territory.
3.32pm BST
The son of British billionaire Richard Branson, Sam, has posted several videos and photographs of the British Virgin Islands on his Instagram page. The images show buildings with their roofs torn from their walls, rebar and debris everywhere, and boats tossed into heaps.
In a text post, Branson said there remains no power in Virgin Gorda, that some bays are flooded, 80% of Cane Garden Bay “destroyed” on the island of Tortola, and that winds and debris remain dangerous.
3.22pm BST
Airports in the Bahamas are closing as Hurricane Irma nears the islands, the AP reports, while evacuations continue from southern islands closest to the storm’s projected path.
The government says the international airport in Nassau will close late Thursday and it urges people who plan to leave the island chain east of Florida to check with airlines for space.
Grand Bahama’s airport and the less-populated island throughout the chain will close by noon Friday.
3.13pm BST
The south Florida counties currently in Irma’s projected course have each provided services for shelters, evacuation, and supply information.
2.57pm BST
“If you’re in an evacuation area, do not wait to get out,” Scott says. “We can’t save you after the storm starts.”
The governor tells families they should “be aggressive” in steps to protect their families. “This is not a storm you can sit and wait through.”
At my direction, @MyFDOT has waived all tolls across Florida roadways. This should help families evacuate quickly and safely.
2.51pm BST
Florida governor Rick Scott has delivered a press conference to update residents about what the state is doing and what Floridians can do to protect themselves.
Miami Dade county, the most populated in the state, should expect “deadly storm surge and life threatening winds”, Scott says. “We can expect this along the entire east coast,” he continues, with landfall in the Florida Keys as early as Friday night.
We can expect additional evacuations as this storm continues to near our state.
2.37pm BST
In south Florida, gas stations have run out of fuel, stores of water, and hardware stores of plywood. Authorities are scrambling to dole out sandbags and other supplies to shore up homes, while people in coastal stretches are fleeing inland or north. Governor Rick Scott is due to give a press conference within minutes.
In Broward, one sky ahead, another behind pic.twitter.com/5QSERbvnva
2.26pm BST
Hello and welcome to Thursday’s coverage of Hurricane Irma. Here’s a round-up of the latest news:
Continue reading...A walk in the Smoky Mountains in the footsteps of her late Cherokee grandfather helped the musician rediscover her muse – and write an album that confronts the US’s rapacious violence
A gargantuan truck fills the driveway of Tori Amos’s Cornwall home. The surrounding countryside is tranquil – verdant hills, stone farm buildings, golden crops swaying in the late August sun – but a throng of activity greets us at the home/recording studio Amos shares with her producer husband, Mark Hawley. The van and attending crew, she says, curled up on the sofa in her library, are here to collect one of her beloved Bösendorfer pianos for an impending European tour. “She’s being put in her case,” explains Amos. “Hopefully with a nice blanket.”
Amos was raised in Maryland, a Led Zeppelin-loving daughter of a minister, and self-taught pianist who would jilt both church and conservatoire to forge her own sound in the 90s: wildly original, taboo-busting piano pop. She cut through grunge’s squall, playing two, sometimes three, piano keyboards simultaneously, while wearing 7in stilettos. Her music is celebrated enough to warrant the occasional benevolent ribbing – the animated series Bob’s Burgers recently had an Amos-esque woman using lyrics about an oil spill as a metaphor for her vagina – and has been an indelible influence on today’s musicians, acknowledged by Taylor Swift, Perfume Genius and Annie “St Vincent” Clark.
Continue reading...It is possible for scientific evidence to help apportion responsibility for climate damages among fossil fuel producers. Our paper shows how
As communities in coastal Texas and Louisiana confront the damage wrought by Hurricane Harvey, another hurricane, Irma, fueled by abnormally warm waters, is barreling into the Caribbean and threatening Puerto Rico and Florida.
We know that the costs of both hurricanes will be enormous and that climate change will have made them far larger than they would have been otherwise. How much larger? Careful studies will take time but the evidence that climate change is warming ocean waters, increasing both sea level and the risk of extreme precipitation in these regions is well established.
More than six percent of the rise in global sea level resulted from emissions traced to ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP
Continue reading...It came without warning, and without equivalent. Now a flash drought is fueling fires and hurting the lives of those who work the land
When Rick Kirn planted his 1,000 acres of spring wheat in May, there were no signs of a weather calamity on the horizon. Three months later, when he should have been harvesting and getting ready to sell his wheat, Kirn was staring out across vast cracked, gray, empty fields dotted with weeds and little patches of stunted wheat.
“It’s a total loss for me,” said Kirn, who operates a small family wheat farm on the Fort Peck Reservation, an area of north-eastern Montana that lies right in the heart of the extreme climatic episode. “There’s nothing to harvest.”
This is as dry as it’s been in history. A lot of people try to compare this to previous years, but you just can’t
Related: Twin megastorms have scientists fearing this may be the new normal
Continue reading...Four professionals from outside the higher education sector tell university leaders how to dress, deal with press, invest wisely and nurture innovation
Universities have faced an onslaught of criticism this summer, from outrage over the “greed” of vice-chancellors to claims that tuition fees are “blighting young people’s futures”. The fallout saw Labour MP Darren Jones resign from an advisory board at the University of Bath over revelations about its vice-chancellor’s 11% pay rise. Last week, it culminated in a speech from Alistair Jarvis, the new chief executive of Universities UK, the representative body for vice-chancellors, in which he denounced critics of universities as people pushing “misinformation, muddled argument and even a little malicious intent”.
With a fresh academic year looming, we sought expert advice for university leaders preparing to tackle whatever the new term throws at them. From facing media scrutiny to ensuring your institution isn’t funding climate change, here’s what the professionals recommend.
Related: 2VCs on...how do we take the pressure off young academics?
Related: I work in a university. Here's what I secretly want to tell senior management
Continue reading...Destructive force of Irma and Harvey has Trump expressing awe, but those in power should focus on the environmental causes
Hurricane Irma – live updatesOne week after the record deluge in Texas, the biggest hurricane ever measured in the mid-Atlantic is tearing through the Caribbean.
Hurricane Irma, a category-five storm, is destroying homes and threatening lives in the Leeward Islands with 185mph winds and 11ft coastal surges, and in the coming days it is forecast to hit Puerto Rico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba and Florida. The governor of Florida has already declared a state of emergency.
Hurricane looks like largest ever recorded in the Atlantic!
Related: Hurricane Irma: devastation as 'superstorm' hits Caribbean and heads for Florida – live
Continue reading...The Guardian’s Azerbaijani Laundromat investigation (UK at heart of $3bn secret payments by Azerbaijan, 5 September) has uncovered thousands of covert payments as part of a European lobbying effort. But the article doesn’t mention the elephant in the room. Azerbaijan is particularly keen to present a positive image in Europe because it needs significant European support for its flagship project – the Southern Gas Corridor – despite the regime’s serial human rights abuses, systemic corruption and election rigging.
The corridor, one of the biggest infrastructure projects undertaken by the fossil fuel industry with a total cost of about $45bn, will carry gas from Azerbaijan to Europe. Powerful interests from fossil fuel corporations to European governments are pushing through this unnecessary project against the will of communities and threatening human rights and a safe climate.
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