The Guardian Climate Change

People urged to stop flow of misinformation as fire department says it is hindering work to save citizens

Home to more than 120 shops, a cinema and 34 restaurants, the Bonaire shopping centre had long been known as one of the largest in the Valencia region. After flood waters coursed through the municipality of Aldaia last week, it began making headlines for another reason: disinformation over the fate of its vast underground car park.

Online personalities, including one with more than 10 million followers, along with a prominent TV host and a far-right activist, seized on the fact that rescuers had been unable to enter the car park, falsely claiming that it contained hundreds – if not thousands – of bodies.

Copernicus Climate Change Service says 2024 marks ‘a new milestone’ and should raise ambitions at Cop29 summit

It is “virtually certain” that 2024 will be the hottest year on record, the European Union’s space programme has found.

The prognosis comes the week before diplomats meet at the Cop29 climate summit and a day after a majority of voters in the US, the biggest historical polluter of planet-heating gas, chose to make Donald Trump president.

How damaging this presidency is to the planet depends very much on how other countries react. There’s no time to waste

• US election 2024 live: latest news and updates
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Donald Trump’s re-election to the White House is a major setback for climate action but ultimately it’s the US that could end up losing out, as the rest of the world will move forward without it.

The US is the world’s biggest economy and its second biggest emitter. Positive US engagement on climate has been crucial to landmark leaps forward, like getting the Paris agreement over the line, and just last year committing to transitioning away from fossil fuels.

The US missing in action in the latter half of this critical decade for climate action is nobody’s idea of a good outcome.

MEPs express concern for EU climate leadership as commission head confirms she will miss Baku summit

Ursula von der Leyen’s decision to miss the Cop29 climate summit is “a fatal signal” and raises questions about Europe’s commitment to the climate crisis, observers have said.

The European Commission confirmed on Tuesday that its president would not attend the UN climate talks in Baku, which start on Monday. “The commission is in a transition phase and the president will therefore focus on her institutional duties,” a spokesperson said.

Election of a ‘climate denier’ to US presidency poses ‘major threat to the planet’, environmentalists say

• US election 2024 – latest updates
• US election results 2024: live map and tracker
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Donald Trump’s new term as US president poses a grave threat to the planet if it blows up the international effort to curb dangerous global heating, stunned climate experts have warned in the wake of his decisive election victory.

Trump’s return to the White House is widely expected to result in the US, yet again, exiting the Paris climate agreement and may even remove American involvement in the underpinning United Nations framework to deal with the climate crisis.

Trump wins the presidency – how did it happen?

Republicans retake control of the Senate

Abortion ballot measure results by state

The Murrumbidgee River had 55% less water in 2018 than it did in 1988, with the Lowbidgee flood plain hardest hit

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A section of one of Australia’s longest rivers, the Murrumbidgee, lost more than half of its water over a 30-year period due to dams and other diversions, according to new research.

Scientists at the University of New South Wales examined the impacts of dam infrastructure and irrigation on natural water flows in the lower Murrumbidgee River since 1890.

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Millionaire points to Broken Hill’s blackout to attack the energy transition but experts say he should look at South Australia and Europe

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For 15 minutes on Sunday morning, ABC local radio listeners were treated to a rant from Dick Smith as the millionaire attacked Australia’s transition away from fossil fuels, claiming renewables would make electricity unaffordable and cause sweeping blackouts.

“It seems we have been sold a pup and we are not getting the full truth all the time,” responded Ian McNamara, the host of Australia All Over. “There are lots of people who will back you up.”

The rightwing regional authorities ignored the climate-crisis science and dismissed the weather forecast – the consequences are their responsibility

• Juan Bordera is a climate journalist and an independent MP for Compromís in the Valencian parliament

It’s almost impossible to describe what we have experienced in the flooded villages and towns around the city of Valencia. Many of those villages and towns are in ruins, with at least 217 dead and others to be pulled out of the mud. There are many areas that still need urgent help. There are towns without water or electricity that have not been able to clean up. There are still flooded garages, buildings on the verge of collapse, and health problems that may result from the accumulated water.

But what also defies belief is the regional Valencian government’s sheer negligence in its pre- and post-disaster management. Let me try to summarise some of the most serious shortcomings.

Juan Bordera is a climate journalist and an independent MP for Compromís in the Valencian parliament. He has donated his fee for this article to a fundraiser for those affected by the storm

More than 150 million people and 318m acres of crops are affected by droughts after summer of record heat

Every US state except Alaska and Kentucky is facing drought, an unprecedented number, according to the US Drought Monitor.

A little more than 45% of the US and Puerto Rico is in drought this week, according to the tracker. About 54% of land in the 48 contiguous US states is affected by droughts.

Former post office operator tells Commons committee that Keir Starmer has not responded to requests for help with settling claims for Horizon scandal

Tom Tugendhat is one of two Conservative leadership candidates not in the shadow cabinet. The other is James Cleverly, who said publicly last week he did not want a frontbench post. The other four candidates (Priti Patel, Mel Stride, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch herself, obviously) are all in the shadow cabinet.

But Tugendhat was not snubbed, Badenoch’s team are saying. He was offered a job, but turned it down.

Full shadow Cabinet has just dropped. Interesting that Tom Tugendhat has NOT taken up a role in Kemi Badenoch’s Shadow Cabinet. Appointments Chris Philp (Home), James Cartlidge (Defence), Kevin Hollinrake (Housing), Vicky Atkins (Environment), Andrew Griffith (Business) and Claire Coutinho (Net Zero).

No room for Suella Braverman in the shadow Cabinet either ...

Looking at the names who are not there - James Cleverly, Oliver Dowden, Jeremy Hunt, Steve Barclay, Tom Tugedhat, Suella Braverman - it looks to me more like a shallow Cabinet rather than a shadow Cabinet. But it is four years until the next general election, and the Tory party is undergoing a shift to a new generation of frontbenchers, and all of these Conservatives have a chance to impress the electorate.

A week on from deluge that devastated the town of Chiva, morale is low and there is anger as politicians play familiar blame game

Everyone in Chiva has their own memories of what happened here a week ago. For some it is the frantic phone calls to loved ones; for others, the disbelief as this small Valencian town, like so many others, was swallowed up by flood waters that bore away cars and trees as if they were paper boats.

For Lourdes Vallés, it is the sound of a car horn sounding through the sodden darkness of last Tuesday night.

Christian Åslund was shocked at the difference between what he saw in 2002 and what confronted him this summer

Standing in blinding sunlight on an archipelago above the Arctic Circle, the photographer Christian Åslund looked in shock at a glacier he had last visited in 2002. It had almost completely disappeared.

Two decades ago Greenpeace asked Åslund to use photographs taken in the early 20th century, and photograph the same views in order to document how glaciers in Svalbard were melting due to global heating. The difference in ice density in those pictures, taken almost a century apart, was staggering.

Lawyer for police argues business should be allowed to continue as Rising Tide threatens to halt exports for 30 hours

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Protesters have scaled back their plan to block the Port of Newcastle to 30 hours, down from an initial 50 hours, amid a legal challenge by New South Wales police to stop the action going ahead.

On Tuesday, police and the protest organiser – Rising Tide – appeared in the supreme court for a second day. Police are challenging the protest, which would involve activists paddling into the harbour on kayaks and rafts to stop coal exports leaving the port.

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Residents warned of ‘potentially life-threatening conditions’ including tornadoes and severe thunderstorms

A day after tornadoes injured at least 11 people while downing trees, power lines and gas lines, communities in Oklahoma on Monday were navigating fresh warnings of destructive weather.

Six or more tornadoes hit the state overnight into Sunday – and more “tornadoes (some strong), large hail, and severe thunderstorm gusts, are expected today into tonight from the Southern Plains into the Ozarks and mid Mississippi Valley”, the US’s National Weather Service (NWS) said on Monday.

Tyre Extinguishers group stencils ‘These cars kill Valencians’ on 4x4s in city to highlight SUVs’ role in climate crisis

Climate activists in Scotland have carried out a series of actions against SUV cars, saying they are acting in solidarity with the victims of the Valencia floods.

The Tyre Extinguishers have called on their supporters to take actions against SUV cars in their areas, after members of the group in Edinburgh stencilled the sides of targeted vehicles on Sunday night with the words: “These cars kill Valencians.”

Severe flooding is, unfortunately, inevitable. What isn’t inevitable is how ready we are, from early warning systems to emergency services

• Friederike Otto is a climatologist and co-founder of World Weather Attribution

At the time of writing, the death toll has risen to 214. Battered cars and other debris are piled up in the streets, large swaths of Valencia remain underwater, and Spain is in mourning. On Sunday, anger erupted as the king and queen of Spain were pelted with mud and other objects by protesters. Why were so many lives lost in a flood that was well forecasted in a wealthy country?

From the global north’s vantage point, the climate crisis, caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas, has long been seen as a distant threat, affecting poor people in the global south. This misconception has perpetuated a false sense of security.

Detailed plans from 30 oil and gas producers come amid historic levels of potent planet-heating emissions

A powerful US oil and gas industry lobby group has drawn up detailed plans to kill off penalties for emitting methane, a potent planet-heating gas that’s increasing at the fastest rate in decades, with this effort led by a major donor to Donald Trump whose company has just been fined for methane pollution.

Leaked internal documents from the American Exploration & Production Council (AXPC), a group of 30 oil and gas producers, outline a push to repeal a fee levied on methane emissions should the former US president win this week’s election and Republicans gain control of Congress.

Day after king and PM pelted by angry residents, search focuses on areas where people could have been trapped

Hundreds of civil and military emergency workers are searching shopping centres, garages and underground car parks for more victims of floods in the Valencia region that have killed at least 214 people, as public anger mounts over Spanish authorities’ handling of the disaster.

Yellow and amber weather warnings were in place for parts of Valencia and neighbouring Catalonia on Monday, with people in the affected areas advised to stay off the roads and keep away from the coast and rivers.

Representatives at the Cop16 summit in Colombia negotiated against a backdrop of extreme weather and ecosystem collapse

As world leaders gathered in Colombia this week, they also watched for news from home, where many of the headlines carried the catastrophic consequences of ecological breakdown. Across the Amazon rainforest and Brazil’s enormous wetlands, relentless fires had burned more than 22m hectares (55m acres). In Spain, the death toll in communities devastated by flooding passed 200. In the boreal forests that span Siberia, Scandinavia, Alaska and Canada, countries were recording alarming signs that their carbon sinks were collapsing under a combined weight of drought, tree death and logging. As Canada’s wildfire season crept to a close, scientists calculated it was the second worst in two decades – behind only last year’s burn, which released more carbon than some of the world’s largest emitting countries.

In global negotiations, climate and nature move along two independent tracks, and for years were broadly treated as distinct challenges. But as negotiations closed at the Cop16 biodiversity summit in Cali on Saturday, ministers from around the world underscored the crucial importance of nature to limiting damage from global heating, and vice versa – emphasising that climate and biodiversity could no longer be treated as independent issues if either crisis was to be resolved. Countries agreed a text on links between the climate and nature, but failed to include language on a phase out of fossil fuels.

The search for people missing in Spain's flood-hit areas continued on Sunday as volunteers helped clear the damage caused by the flooding. On Saturday, the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced that thousands of troops would be deployed to help response efforts. The death toll from the floods has risen to more than 210

• Spain floods: 10,000 troops and police drafted in to deal with disaster

• Spain’s apocalyptic floods show two undeniable truths: the climate crisis is getting worse and Big Oil is killing us