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Exclusive: Fixing a leak can be simple and equivalent to closing a coal power station, making lack of action maddening, say analysts
The world’s worst mega-leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane in 2025 have been revealed by an analysis of satellite data.
The super-polluting plumes from oil and gas facilities have a colossal heating impact on the climate but often result from poor maintenance and can be simple to fix. The assessment found dozens of mega-leaks, each having the same global heating impact as a coal-fired power station.
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Our photojournalist explores the Cornish landmark on the eve of its anniversary and meets some of its staff, visitors, plants and creatures
“Give me a sleeping bag and I’ll happily sleep here overnight,” says Kim Mackintosh as she wanders amid the vibrant flora of the Mediterranean biome at the Eden Project on the eve of the tourist attraction’s 25th anniversary.
Loupe in hand, the leader of the biome’s horticulture team is marvelling at an array of plants that have recently come into bloom, tenderly examining the yellow furry buds of an Acacia glaucoptera before flogging a Grevillea flower to dispense its rich, honey-flavoured nectar.
Kim Mackintosh inspects the ‘kangaroo paw’ of an Anigozanthos through her loupe. All photographs by Jonny Weeks
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From fluffy owlets to rosy-hued flamingos, Claire Rosen’s portraits of live birds took her on a journey that touched on colonialism, wallpaper design … and chickens
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Drosopigi, the Mani, Greece: This rocky region’s abundance of flora takes the breath away – not least a long and winding trail of Chios chamomile
The Greek name for this southernmost tip of the Peloponnese is linked to a Byzantine fort at Cape Tigani (called Megali Maina), but it may well also draw on the region’s desolate, mountainous rocky country that persists throughout the entire peninsula.
The fierce Maniot people were well described by Patrick Leigh Fermor in his book Mani (1958), but the region has been more recently celebrated in Charles Foster’s brilliant The Edges of the World, published in January. In history the Mani was known variously for the relentless and sometimes centuries-long vendettas between its local clans, as a fertile recruiting ground for Mediterranean piracy and as an early outpost for Greek liberation from Ottoman rule.
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Researchers project that reduced activity could contribute to half a million additional premature deaths annually by 2050
Rising temperatures are making physical activity undesirable and even dangerous in many parts of the world, and as global heating worsens, it will further affect how much people are able to move.
Researchers analysed data from 156 countries between 2000 and 2022 and modelled how rising temperatures may affect physical activity globally by 2050.
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Exclusive: Claire Earley’s son Rex spent six weeks in hospital after contracting E coli from contaminated lake
Realtime pollution alerts are needed across Windermere urgently, campaigners have said, as the mother of a seven-year-old boy who kayaked on the lake described how he nearly died after contracting a dangerous strain of E coli from contaminated water.
Claire Earley’s son Rex spent six weeks in hospital, and underwent two emergency operations, after a family kayaking trip on Windermere last August.
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Recording of humpback whale from 1949 could also provide new understanding of how the huge animals communicate
A haunting whale song discovered on decades-old audio equipment could open up a new understanding of how the huge animals communicate, according to researchers who say it is the oldest such recording known.
The song is that of a humpback whale, a marine giant beloved by whale watchers for its docile nature and spectacular leaps from the water, and was recorded by scientists in March 1949 in Bermuda, said researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
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Falling costs and government incentives made solar an attractive option for many, which has reduced need for gas
After prices of liquefied natural gas surged to record highs following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, millions of people in Pakistan were repeatedly left without electricity. An intense heatwave and gas shortages amid record-breaking prices resulted in power cuts across the country.
But people soon started to realise there was an alternative. The falling costs of solar panels and generous government incentives to feed excess power back to the grid made rooftop solar an attractive option.
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Water shortages and rising heat is putting pressure on beer ingredients, but US brewers and farmers are adapting
With St Patrick’s Day this week, millions of Americans are raising a glass. Beer remains the country’s most popular alcoholic drink with more than 6bn gallons consumed each year. But from water shortages to rising temperatures, the climate crisis is putting pressure on beer’s most essential ingredients.
At Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon, beer is either stacked high in warehouse rows or racing down a canning line and assembled into 12-packs. Inside the cavernous cellars, enormous 6,000-gallon tanks hold the latest batches in progress.
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The Quapaw Nation is the only US Native community to carry out a cleanup of one of the country’s worst sites of environmental contamination
They call this land the Laue. In the late 1800s, part of these 200 acres of grassland inside the Quapaw Nation were allotted to tribal citizen Charley Quapaw Blackhawk. After forcing dozens of tribes into Indian territory before the civil war, the US government then parceled out reservations and property to individual members. It was part of the government’s attempt to “civilize” Native Americans by turning them into private, not communal,landholders and yeoman farmers in the model of Thomas Jefferson’s ideal citizen.
Yet, for the last century, little grew on the Laue. Half of it was buried beneath towering mounds of toxic rock known as chat piles. The waste rock, laced with chemicals, was left after miners extracted millions of tons of lead and zinc from the Tri-State Mining District, where the valuable ores stretched across Kansas, Missouri and Oklahomabetween 1891 and the 1970s. By 1983, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had designated 40 sq miles that include nearly all the Quapaw Nation as the Tar Creek Superfund site, joining the EPA’s list of the most contaminated places in the country. Informally called a “megasite”, Tar Creek remains one of the largest and most complex environmental disasters in the country.
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