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Net increase of 80,000 deaths a year projected in hottest scenario, with milder winters failing to redress balance
Dangerous temperatures could kill 50% more people in Europe by the end of the century, a study has found, with the lives lost to stronger heat projected to outnumber those saved from milder cold.
The researchers estimated an extra 8,000 people would die each year as a result of “suboptimal temperatures” even under the most optimistic scenario for cutting planet-heating pollution. The hottest plausible scenario they considered showed a net increase of 80,000 temperature-related deaths a year.
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Marathon Petroleum said a massive fire at its Louisiana refinery caused ‘no offsite impacts’. Reporting by the Guardian and Forensic Architecture raised doubts about this claim
Oil giant Marathon Petroleum is fighting an expanded class-action lawsuit fueled by an investigation by the Guardian and Forensic Architecture, which examined a huge toxic blaze at the company’s sprawling refinery in south-east Louisiana in 2023.
Parts of the oil refinery, the third largest in America, caught fire for over three days in August 2023 after a large storage tank containing the toxic and flammable hydrocarbon naphtha leaked for more than 13 hours unbeknown to the predominantly Black low-income communities that surround the facility.
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A study identified black spatulas as a source of chemical leaks in food – but miscalculated the dosage. So how concerned should you really be?
The black spatula was recently identified as an unexpected source of danger. A slew of coverage followed a research paper suggesting that toxic flame retardants in recycled black plastic could be leaching into food at hazardous levels. Your cool black kitchenware could be slowly poisoning you, one newspaper warned and a reasonable reader may have shared the Atlantic’s conclusion that the only safe course of action was to eliminate this ubiquitous and previously understated item. The peer-reviewed paper turned out to have miscalculated the dosage by a factor of 10, but the research lifted a lid on the normally hidden, and apparently murky, world of plastic recycling. So should we re-admit the black spatula into the cutlery drawer or is there genuine cause for concern?
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The high cost and low availability of charging for those without driveways is hindering the UK’s EV economy
Britain’s car owners are split into two tribes: the have-drives and the have-nots.
If you have private off-street parking there are very few reasons not to buy an electric car (if you can afford to). The challenge, and one putting a brake on the transition away from polluting fossil fuels, is for motorists who jostle with neighbours to park on the street and access to public EV chargers.
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This week the EU will argue the UK’s ban on catching the tiny fish, celebrated by conservationists, amounts to discrimination against Danish fishers
“We did it!” These were the words uttered by the RSPB last year when, after 25 years of campaigning, the UK government banned fishing for sandeels in the North Sea and Scotland. The small eel-like fish might not seem a likely species to inspire a decades-long fight – but they are the treasured food of one of Britain’s rarest and most threatened seabirds, the puffin, as well as many other UK seabirds and marine species.
The celebrations, however, were short-lived. The EU threw its weight behind Denmark – the country with by far the biggest sandeel fishing fleet – and challenged the ban, meaning that this week, the humble sandeel will become the focus of the first courtroom trade battle between the UK and the EU since Brexit.
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Complaint says Chemours factory dramatized in Hollywood movie Dark Waters continues to pollute West Virginia river
The chemical giant Chemours’s notorious West Virginia PFAS plant is regularly polluting nearby water with high levels of toxic “forever chemicals”, a new lawsuit alleges.
It represents the latest salvo in a decades-old fight over pollution from the plant, called Washington Works, which continues despite public health advocates winning significant legal battles.
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Royal Botanic Gardens scientists are heading to the Victorian national park in search of plant survivors amid the charred landscape
The Grampians globe-pea, a critically endangered wiry shrub, had finished flowering and was fruiting when fires tore through its home in the Grampians national park, in western Victoria. The spiny plant with vibrant orange and yellow flowers is extremely rare and restricted to a handful of sites, including areas within the 76,000 hectares that burned over December and January.
Finding the globe-pea will be a priority when a plant rescue mission led by Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria heads to the Grampians to search for survivors and signs of life amid the charred landscape.
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‘It was striking that the White House memo included toilets and shower heads as a presidential priority,’ said one expert
From crusading against showers he feels don’t sufficiently wash his hair to reversing protections for a small fish he calls “worthless”, Donald Trump’s personal fixations have helped shape his first environmental priorities as US president.
While withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accords and declaring an “energy emergency” were among Trump’s most noteworthy executive orders on his first day in office, both were further down a list of priorities put out by the White House than measures to improve “consumer choice in vehicles, shower heads, toilets, washing machines, lightbulbs and dishwashers”.
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The TV wild man complains about silly game shows and steamed potatoes, munches toast and goes outdoors with his amazing dog
What’s first? I’ll take my dog out. I’m totally his servant. He doesn’t leave my side. If I sit in the woods, he’ll sit in front of me and watch in the same way. He’s amazing.
Sunday grub? Maybe a bit of toast. Nothing exciting. I like a Sunday lunch, but it’s a rare event. We might go out, but it’s getting harder to find somewhere that does a decent roast.
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A gripping play in London’s West End tells how agreement of the first climate protocol in 1997 was a triumph, as scientists share new warnings about the scale of the crisis
As material for a West End show, the backroom machinations of an international climate conference sound unpromising.
Pedantry, boredom and delegates fighting over the wording of treaty clauses do not sound like the stuff of high drama. Nevertheless, Kyoto, a Royal Shakespeare Company production by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson now playing at Soho Place in London, has been widely praised by critics and rapturously received at its opening this month.
Continue reading...The health watchdog says gambling should be given the same weight as alcohol and nicotine addiction.
Pharmacists say they are aware of people being wrongly prescribed weight-loss drugs.
The UK Health Security Agency says cases of bird-to-human transmission were rare.
A host of hospital building projects have been put back to the 2030s. How will they cope?
Some online sites prescribe a potentially risky hair loss drug without consistent safety checks, BBC finds.
Norovirus cases are the highest they have been since January 2020.
The alarming rise in disorders such as anorexia and bulimia is now an emergency, a cross-party group says.
George Rabbett-Smith's mum criticises online sellers for inflating the discontinued product's price.
While the number of patients with flu are declining, a cold snap has again placed nurses under extreme stress.
Some women are opting for fertility tracking apps to avoid mood swings and weight gain on "hormonal" contraception.
A new study is ringing alarm bells for freshwater species, finding nearly a quarter are at risk of extinction.
Alarm bells screamed for nature in 2024. But amid the gloom, quiet victories emerged, as ordinary people made extraordinary progress for nature.
It was a year of rough seas for the world’s oceans. But that didn’t stop conservationists and communities from working to protect the seas. Here are highlights from the year.
Conservation International researchers in Peru have uncovered a wealth of wildlife, including species new to science.
As 2024 comes to a close, global temperatures are at an all-time high — topping the previous hottest-year on record: 2023. Yet amid this backdrop, research consistently shows nature is a powerful climate ally.
“Invest in one woman, and that ripples out to her family, her community and beyond. It changes people’s lives.”
In southern Africa, grasses can beat the heat better than trees, according to Conservation International research.
An unheralded breakthrough at the recent UN biodiversity conference highlights the often-overlooked connection between our health and the planet’s, a Conservation International expert says.
A recent study on climate solutions downplays nature’s potential, two Conservation International experts say.
A new study found that seaweed forests may play a bigger role in fighting climate change than previously thought — absorbing as much climate-warming carbon as the Amazon rainforest. But not all seaweed forests are created equal.
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