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The giant land is the only place on Earth not touched by Covid. A British team is on a mission to protect it while also doing vital research
This week, 40 men and women will emerge from quarantine and board the Royal Research Ship James Clark Ross as it prepares to sail from Harwich in Essex to the South Atlantic. Their mission is straightforward. They will attempt to salvage scientific operations in Antarctica while also keeping it Covid-free.
The continent is the only place on Earth that is still untouched by the pandemic – though keeping the virus at bay there has come at a cost. All major research projects in the Antarctic have been halted. As a result, no senior British scientist will have embarked on a mission to the continent this year for the first time in decades.
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Continue reading...As the Earth’s ice melts, large numbers of perfectly preserved ancient artefacts are being revealed. But time is running out and ‘glacial archaeologists’ are racing to find these fragile treasures
Back in August 2018, archaeologists William Taylor and Nick Jarman were scrambling around a snowy, scree-strewn slope in the Altai mountains in northwest Mongolia at the end of an exhausting day. A few hundred metres above Jarman, Taylor and his colleagues were surveying the site, a disappearing ice field that local reindeer herders said had not melted in living memory. Now, each summer, it disappears almost completely.
Taylor looked down the mountain and saw his methodical colleague dancing and hollering, hopping from rock to rock. Thinking he was injured, Taylor headed down the mountain.
Continue reading...Maricopa county is home to America’s hottest city, where deaths from the heat are weighing on voters’ minds
Even now, Ivan Moore can’t think why his father didn’t didn’t tell anyone that the air conditioning in their house was busted. “I honestly don’t know what was going through his mind,” he said.
For the first time in American history, climate change has reached the very top echelons of voting issues
Continue reading...ALP sees Annastacia Palaszczuk’s third electoral win as a sign of recovery but as yet has set no short-term emissions target
Federal Labor has let out a sigh of relief after the Queensland state election win, admitting it can take “a lot of heart” from the victory – but its position on gas continues to cause ructions.
The party has looked at the Palaszczuk government’s third electoral win – which included strong primary vote results in central and north Queensland regions that abandoned Labor at the last federal election – as the beginning of its recovery in the state.
Related: Queensland election: Annastacia Palaszczuk wins historic third term
Related: Net zero: what if Australia misses the moment on climate action?
Continue reading...The bushfires and the plague are symptoms of something momentous unfolding on Earth – an acceleration of our impact on nature
This is part of a series of essays by Australian writers responding to the challenges of 2020What has been the most shocking event of 2020? Was it awakening on New Year’s Day to more news of terror in Australia’s southern forests, to the realisation that the future was suddenly here, that this spring and summer of relentless bushfire was a planetary event? Was it the silent transmission of Covid-19, already on the loose and soon to overwhelm the world and change the very fabric of daily life everywhere at once? Or was it the surging race riots and protests, especially across America, where police brutality triggered grief, anger and outrage about the inequality and injustice still faced by black people? Could we even distinguish them from each other, this overlapping sequence of horrors?
Related: Trouble breathing: 'We all breathe the same air, but we don't breathe equally'
Related: The megafires and pandemic expose the lies that frustrate action on climate change | Tim Flannery
Continue reading...International action on emissions reduction will get a huge shot in the arm if the US election goes to the Democratic leader
I’m a deeply superstitious person, so I can barely bring myself to utter the words “if Joe Biden wins the American presidency next week”, but for the purposes of where we are going this weekend, I need to utter those words, because that’s our starting point for unpacking a few things.
If Biden wins, obviously that’s the end of the Trump administration, which would be a boon on so many fronts. So, so many fronts. The compendium of boon would span many volumes, and we haven’t got all weekend, so let’s just hone in on one critical issue that impacts Australia, and that’s climate change.
Related: Joe Biden if president will push allies like Australia to do more on climate, adviser says
Scott Morrison is leaving his options open on signing up to net zero
Related: Centre-right thinktank warns Morrison government of 'grave future for coal exports'
Related: Labor agrees to support new gas projects after public brawl sparked by Joel Fitzgibbon
Continue reading...Three of Australia’s biggest trading partners have recently committed to go ‘carbon-neutral’. Experts say it’s the greatest shift in climate politics since the Paris agreement
For a national leader who had just been told up to $80bn in fossil fuel export industries were on the chopping block, Scott Morrison seemed remarkably sanguine.
“I am not concerned about our future exports,” the prime minister said at a press conference on Wednesday. “I’m very aware of the many views that are held around the world but I tell you what – our policies will be set here in Australia.”
Related: Japan's net zero by 2050 pledge another warning to Australia on fossil fuels, analysts say
Related: Is a just transition from coal to renewables possible?
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Continue reading...Australia’s black summer killed 33 people, destroyed thousands of homes and devastated native wildlife. Those affected by the fires respond to the royal commission report in their own words
Related: Australia must prepare for future shaped by extreme climate, bushfire royal commission warns
Continue reading...Two major fires are consuming the forests in the Rocky mountains, killing at least two people and causing an estimated $195m in damages
By 23 October, a blustery Friday toward the end of a depressingly short autumn, the two largest wildfires in Colorado’s recent history were descending on Rocky Mountain national park, reaching toward each other with a mere 10 miles of bone-dry forest between them.
The Cameron Peak fire had arrived from the north and had already scorched through wilderness for 71 days. The East Troublesome fire was approaching from the west, sending flames over the Continental Divide and forcing the evacuation of the nearby town of Estes Park.
Related: ‘Wake-up call’: wildfires tear through drought-plagued US south-west
Continue reading...Former fire chiefs call for ‘no new coal or gas’ after royal commission found climate change fuelled the black summer bushfires
Australia’s summer bushfires were fuelled by climate change and governments must respond to the royal commission into the disaster with tougher policies to reduce emissions, including “no new coal or gas”, former fire chiefs have said.
Craig Lapsley, a former Victorian emergency management commissioner, said the $10bn cost of the bushfire disaster laid out in the report was “staggering”.
Related: Australia must prepare for future shaped by extreme climate, bushfire royal commission warns
Related: 'You can see it in their eyes': long after the bushfires the pain lingers in Cobargo
Related: Australia after the bushfires
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