Environment

Major hurdles to Carmichael mine remain despite comments by Karan Adani that the company has ‘completed financing’

Adani says its Carmichael coalmine remains contingent on a loan to build a rail line to the Galilee Basin – comments that analysts believe will ramp up pressure on the Australian government to further subsidise the project.

Karan Adani, the son of company boss Gautam Adani, and the head of the conglomerate’s ports business, told India’s Economic Times the company had “completed financing on the mine” and that it had received all necessary approvals.

Satellite imagery shows hundreds of glaciers shrinking as average annual temperature rises 3.6C in 70 years

Hundreds of glaciers in Canada’s high Arctic are shrinking and many are at risk of disappearing completely, an unprecedented inventory of glaciers in the country’s northernmost island has revealed.

Using satellite imagery, researchers catalogued more than 1,700 glaciers in northern Ellesmere Island and traced how they had changed between 1999 and 2015.

Phosphate fertilisers are causing dangerous levels of pollution in waterways that harm aquatic plants and animals

Much of the environment is awash with fertilisers, boosting thuggish weeds such as stinging nettles that swamp other wild plants. Nitrate is a big villain in this onslaught, but far less notice is taken of phosphate.

Phosphate is crucial for plant growth and development, and it is estimated that half the world’s food supplies rely on phosphate fertilisers, but this is a dwindling resource that is used very inefficiently, which is leading to widespread pollution. Unlike nitrate, phosphate binds very strongly to the soil, which makes it difficult for plant roots to get hold of. And so farmers apply even more phosphates in fertilisers and manure, although much of that phosphate then sticks to the soil again, driving the levels of phosphate in the soil even higher.

Related: Conservationists claim 'legal victory' in dispute over government protection of rivers

Promotion deemed commercial exploitation of children as well as environmentally damaging

Environmental groups and health advocates have denounced Coles’s new Little Shop promotion as “commercial exploitation of kids”, “nonsensical” and “environmentally damaging”.

From Wednesday, Coles shoppers will be offered a free toy – a miniature version of 30 well-known household products – with every $30 spent.

Former head of Clean Energy Finance Corporation says governments should not support Neg in current state

Oliver Yates, the former head of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, says state and territory governments should not sign on to the Turnbull government’s national energy guarantee until such time as it contains meaningful emissions reductions.

Yates, a respected industry player now active in the renewables sector, and a board member of the Smart Energy Council – a solar group critical of the Neg – told Guardian Australia the Turnbull government’s policy “doesn’t do anything other than create a stable emissions profile for existing coal-fired power stations.”

As your article on nuclear weapons states (All you wanted to know about nuclear war but were too afraid to ask, 16 July), the use of a nuclear weapons is now more likely than at any time since the cold war. Billions are being spent on modernising superpower nuclear arsenals. The old “deterrence” myth – that they will never be used – is still being deployed, but at the same time Trump is unveiling plans for new “usable” nuclear weapons, and outlining more scenarios in which to use them.

With Trump’s tearing up of the Iran nuclear deal, the dangers of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East are increasing. The possibility of denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula hangs on a thread – a return to threat and counter-threat is an ever-present danger, with potentially catastrophic consequences. But this tide towards annihilation can be turned if the political will is there. Maybe we can’t expect that from the trigger-happy US president, but we should demand it from our own government.

Democratic lawmakers and scientists denounced proposal to allow administrators to reject study results if research isn’t public

Democratic lawmakers joined scientists, health and environmental officials and activists on Tuesday in denouncing a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), backed by industry, that could limit dramatically what kind of science the agency considers when making regulations.

Related: Andrew Wheeler: 'point man for Trump' focused on undoing Obama's EPA agenda

United Utilities, imposing ban on 7m households, is second worst for leaking pipes

The water company ordering a hosepipe ban on 7m households in the north-west of England has the second-worst record for leaking pipes of any supplier, industry data shows.

The temporary use ban being imposed by United Utilities from 5 August has led to calls for water firms to do more to tackle leakage on their networks.

As hunters hold immense clout in the Trump administration and most of the council’s members are advocates of the sport, critics worry the board will protect their hobby, not the animals

Donald Trump has called big-game trophy hunting a “horror show”, despite his own sons’ participation in elephant and leopard hunts, and in 2017 he formed an advisory board to steer US policy on the issue.

CSIRO says lack of consumer awareness is ‘number one issue’ affecting recycling

Australians have to boost their recycling of lithium-ion batteries, a new CSIRO report has found.

Consumers only recycle 2% of our lithium-ion batteries, and an estimated $813m to $3bn worth of valuable components is in landfill. The commonly-used rechargeable batteries are used in mobile phones, laptops, household appliances and, increasingly, electric vehicles.

Fossil fuels increased share of energy supply investment last year – the first time since 2014

The world’s energy watchdog has sounded the alarm over a “worrying” pause in the shift to clean energy after global investment in renewables fell 7% to $318bn (£240bn) last year.

The International Energy Agency said the decline is set to continue into 2018, threatening energy security, climate change and air pollution goals.

This week marks the annual stocktake of the crown’s swans on the River Thames, known as swan upping. The process of counting the swans on the river and identifying them as belonging to the Queen or one of the two City livery companies that also have rights to them – has been carried out since the 12th century, when the birds were so prized for their meat that all wild swans in England were appropriated as property of the crown. The pomp, finery and techniques of swan upping would be familiar to the villagers who looked on centuries ago

The energy used in our digital consumption is set to have a bigger impact on global warming than the entire aviation industry

It was just another moment in this long, increasingly strange summer. I was on a train home from Paddington station, and the carriage’s air-conditioning was just about fighting off the heat outside. Most people seemed to be staring at their phones – in many cases, they were trying to stream a World Cup match, as the 4G signal came and went, and Great Western Railway’s onboard wifi proved to be maddeningly erratic. The trebly chatter of headphone leakage was constant. And thousands of miles and a few time zones away in Loudoun County, Virginia, one of the world’s largest concentrations of computing power was playing its part in keeping everything I saw ticking over, as data from around the world passed back and forth from its vast buildings.

Most of us communicate with this small and wealthy corner of the US every day. Thanks to a combination of factors – its proximity to Washington DC, competitive electricity prices, and its low susceptibility to natural disasters – the county is the home of data centres used by about 3,000 tech companies: huge agglomerations of circuitry, cables and cooling systems that sit in corners of the world most of us rarely see, but that are now at the core of how we live. About 70% of the world’s online traffic is reckoned to pass through Loudoun County.

Researchers say the western barred bandicoot was actually five species and those ‘reintroduced’ would never have lived in SA

An endangered Australian bandicoot that was reintroduced to the Australian mainland is now believed to be one of five distinct species, and researchers say it may have been a mistake to introduce it to South Australia.

Scientists working for the Western Australian Museum have published research that concludes that what has been known as the western barred bandicoot is in fact five distinct species – four of which had become extinct by the 1940s as a result of agriculture and introduced predators. The species were closely related but occurred in different parts of Australia.

A basketball-sized lava bomb slammed through the roof of a tour boat near an active fissure of the Hawaiian volcano early Monday morning, showering the vessel with debris.

(Image credit: Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources/AP)

United Utilities says 7 million customers will be affected by first ban since 2012

Millions of households in the north-west of England will face the first hosepipe ban in the country since 2012 after the UK’s longest heatwave in more than 40 years.

The water company United Utilities said 7 million customers would be affected by the ban, which is due to come into force on 5 August.

Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography hope to turn surfers into citizen scientists by equipping them with a "smartfin" that gathers data as they surf.

The Internet relies on a network of cables, many buried underground along U.S. coastlines. A new analysis finds sea level rise could put thousands of miles of cable underwater in the next 15 years.

(Image credit: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images)

Special Rapporteur on indigenous peoples calls for a new, rights-based approach to conservation

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on indigenous peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, has released a report highly critical of the global conservation movement and calling for indigenous peoples and other local communities to have a greater say in protecting the world’s forests. Titled Cornered by Protected Areas and co-authored with the US-based NGO Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), the report is an explicit condemnation of “fortress conservation.”

What exactly is meant by that? It is “the idea that to protect forests and biodiversity, ecosystems need to function in isolation, devoid of people,” the Rapporteur told the Guardian. “This model - favoured by governments for over a century - ignores the growing body of evidence that forests thrive when Indigenous Peoples remain on their customary lands and have legally recognised rights to manage and protect them.”

Government’s top climate adviser warns policymakers will be judged harshly by future generations if they don’t act now

The government’s official climate change adviser says politicians and policymakers are failing to rise to the challenge of a rapidly warming planet and will be judged harshly by future generations unless they act now.

Lord Deben, chair of the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC), said “anyone who read the news” could see mounting evidence of alarming trends – from melting polar ice to record heatwaves and rising sea levels. He called on politicians to “make the connections” between these events and act with more urgency.