The Guardian Climate Change

Website of ‘Doge’ includes information published by thinktank CEI, which claims to fight ‘climate alarmism’

Flanked by Donald Trump in the Oval Office this week, Elon Musk claimed his much-vaunted, but ill-defined, “department of government efficiency” (Doge) was providing “maximum transparency” on its blitz through the federal government.

Its official website was empty, however – until Wednesday, when it added elements including data from a controversial rightwing thinktank recently sued by a climate scientist.

Kathleen Sgamma to oversee Bureau of Land Management, agency that manages quarter-billion acres of public land

Donald Trump has nominated a longtime oil and gas industry representative to oversee an agency that manages a quarter-billion acres of public land concentrated in western states.

Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Colorado-based oil industry trade group Western Energy Alliance, was named Bureau of Land Management director, a position with wide influence over lands used for energy production, grazing, recreation and other purposes. An MIT graduate, Sgamma has been a leading voice for the fossil fuel industry, calling for fewer drilling restrictions on public lands that produce about 10% of US oil and gas.

As AfD says Germany is in grip of ‘eco-dictatorship’, Green party tones down mention of climate action

The crowd had crammed into a concert hall in central Berlin to hear crunch-time election pitches from Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, the high-profile Green ministers in charge of Germany’s economy and diplomacy. But to the surprise of some supporters, it took half an hour for anyone in the environment-rooted party to mention the climate.

Germany’s Greens are fighting to hold on to power after four years in a coalition government where they have been pilloried by other parties, and during which their core issue of climate action has slipped down the political agenda. Though the party is still far from being considered a Volkspartei – a main party whose voters span demographic groups and issues – the Greens have sought to boost their mainstream appeal with talk of beefing up security and bringing down rents and bills.

Greenpeace protest draws attention to worsening typhoons and demands accountability from major polluters

For two days and two nights, Ronalyn Carbonel and her four children clung to the roof of their home as a huge storm raged around them. With the wind battering her village of Rizal, about 10 miles east of Manila in the Philippines, and water swirling through the rooms below them, they had no choice but to wait, hoping that someone would come to rescue them and hundreds of their neighbours.

“We did not have shelter, we did not have food … we just had to wait for the government for two days,” Carbonel said. “It is not easy, no electricity, no light, we just wait for the sun to rise. The children were scared, we had never experienced anything like this.”

Record highs delay start of classes in Rio Grande do Sul, where floods fueled by climate crisis left 180 dead last May

During historic floods last May that left more than 180 dead in Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, the water rose to the ceiling of the Olindo Flores school in the city of São Leopoldo, destroying furniture, books and parts of its infrastructure.

When classes resumed more than a month later, its 500 students had to be relocated to another school for months.

RHS is asking people to look for under-threat varieties such as the Sussex Bonfire and Mrs William Copeland

Britons have been asked to hunt for rare pink, white and “bonfire yellow” daffodils in order to save threatened varieties from extinction.

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), which is running the daffodil count, is hoping to build a map of the spring blooms. It is asking people to log where daffodils are flowering in their area along with basic information such as colour, type and height.

The fundraising platform saw more than a million donors in all 50 states and 160 countries donate to relief and recovery

Just over a month since devastating wildfires broke out across southern California, the fundraising platform GoFundMe has raised more money for victims of the fires than for all other natural disasters worldwide last year.

To date, more than a million donors in all 50 states and 160 countries have donated more than $250m to support fire relief and recovery efforts, about $20m more than GoFundMe collected after all other disasters last year, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton. That includes donations to individual families and businesses, as well as non-profits providing relief on the ground, including Direct Relief, World Central Kitchen and Salvation Army, according to a spokesperson for the company.

Renters are not only facing an escalation in rent prices but also pressure to evict apartments from landlords

Wendy López, a single mother of three from Guatemala, received an eviction order the day before wildfires destroyed Pacific Palisades, where she worked as a caregiver for people with disabilities.

The crisis only escalated the eviction process, Lopez said. The landlord for her rent-stabilized Mid City apartment has sent her threatening letters nearly every day. On 1 February, he raised her monthly rent from $1,320 to $1,430, exceeding the 4% legal rent increase limit. Moving is not an option, she said, because rent for similar housing elsewhere has doubled since the fires.

Research reveals surf breaks are on the frontline of threats that could undermine access to and enjoyment of our famous beaches

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Steph Curley glides atop the water on a 9ft, locally shaped long board. A sea turtle bobs among a couple of dozen surfers off a rocky headland in Noosa – dolphins frolic further out.

Curley angles her single fin towards the boulder-strewn point and paddles on to a two-foot wave. The wave breaks steeply at first, but as Curley swings her big blue board towards the pandanus palms and tea trees that line the shore and give the bay its name, the wave peels gently, offering up a long, luxurious ride.

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Social media storm of misinformation about Bovaer has drawn in Reform UK, the dairy industry and even Bill Gates

Scientists say a recent methane-related conspiracy theory was “a wake-up call” for the industry, reminding them they need to communicate better and more directly with the public.

Over the last few months, Bovaer, a cattle feed additive that is proven to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas, has been at the centre of a swirl of misinformation, drawing in Reform UK, the dairy industry and even the billionaire Bill Gates.

Emmanuel Macron’s tech envoy warns attenders current trajectory of artificial intelligence is unsustainable

The impact of artificial intelligence on the environment and inequality have featured in the opening exchanges of a global summit in Paris attended by political leaders, tech executives and experts.

Emmanuel Macron’s AI envoy, Anne Bouverot, opened the two-day gathering at the Grand Palais in the heart of the French capital with a speech referring to the environmental impact of AI, which requires vast amounts of energy and resource to develop and operate.

Insurers blame ‘significant and consistent bad weather’ after year of 12 named storms

Insurers paid out a record £585m for weather-related damage to homes and possessions in Britain last year, after record-breaking rain and storms hit the country.

The data, from the Association of British Insurers (ABI), revealed that claims for damage to homes from windstorms, flooding and frozen pipes in 2024 surpassed the previous record in 2022, for the same types of claim, by £77m. The figure is £127m higher than the weather-related claims payouts for 2023.

On Qikiqtaruk, off Canada’s Yukon coast, scientists are wielding virtual-reality cameras, 3D models and digital archives to protect the island’s history and culture before it disappears

It was early July when the waters of the Beaufort Sea crept, then rushed, over the gravel spit of a remote Arctic island. For hours, the narrow strip of land, extending like the tail of a comma into the waters, gradually disappeared into the ocean.

When Canadian scientists on Qikiqtaruk (also known as Herschel Island), off the coast of Canada’s Yukon territory, surveyed the deluge, they saw a grimly comical scene unfold.

Jesse Noakes, 36, and Matilda Lane-Rose, 20, and Emil Davey, 23, fined a total of $6,500 after pleading guilty to unlawful damage and trespass

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A group of climate activists have been fined over a foiled protest at the Woodside Energy boss’s family home.

About 10 counter-terrorism police were waiting for Jesse Noakes, 36, and Matilda Lane-Rose, 20, when they arrived at the Perth home of Woodside chief executive, Meg O’Neill, in August 2023 with paint, water balloons and a bicycle lock.

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On this day in 2020 the worst of the massive bushfires finally went out – but Australia had little time to grieve as the Covid pandemic took hold. Five years on, we examine the wounds of that summer

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There’s no point trying to make plans around the whims of Trump. The PM instead needs to turn to Europe

To Elon Musk, I say this! To perform one Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, might be considered a misfortune. To perform two Nazi salutes at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, begins to look like carelessness.

I didn’t write that joke. I have cannibalised it from one by the gay Irish Victorian Oscar Wilde, a typical diversity hire who would have achieved nothing had his work not been promoted by the famously woke 19th-century British establishment. Luckily, Wilde was dead long before he had the opportunity to emigrate to the US and take an air traffic controller job from a more deserving straight white male, where his gayness would have caused planes to crash.

Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf this year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July

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Heading off the environmental crisis and growing the economy are not at odds. They are two sides of a coin – as our politicians should realise

If you care about the world we are handing on to future generations, the news on Thursday morning was dramatic. This January was the warmest on record; temperatures in 18 of the past 19 months have exceeded pre-industrial averages by 1.5C. There can be no comfort that the epoch-changing climate crisis is 20 or even 10 years away. It is already upon us.

Temperatures should have been moderated this winter by cooler air over the Pacific; it did not happen. Scientists are bewildered and scared. James Hansen, doyen of climate crisis research, believes that, unless this pace of deterioration is reversed, warm ocean waters flowing from the southern to the northern hemisphere will be trapped as vast sea currents cease. Sea levels will rise to impose a civilisational threat. It is a global imperative to dial down the rate of carbon emissions.

Resilience is wearing thin in the town, with business owners facing mass booking cancellations and insurers turning their backs

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The tourist road from Dunkeld to Halls Gap is eerily quiet. Blackened trees stretch spidery branches towards a sky still smudged with smoke. The road is open but few cars take it save for a wildlife rescue vehicle inching slowly along, its occupants scanning the burnt-out forest for limping wallabies reported in the area. A lone currawong shrieks, invisible.

Fire ripped through this part of the Grampians/Gariwerd national park six weeks ago, and still burns on the other side of the mountain range – an immense rocky ridge jutting out through the smoke haze. But already new growth is starting to sprout. Green spikes burst from the charcoal stumps of grass-trees. Near a dry creek bed, tiny fern fronds unfurl out of the ash.

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The party’s agenda is about energy security, lower bills, economic growth and good jobs

• Ed Miliband is the Labour MP for Doncaster North and secretary of state for energy security and net zero

During four years in opposition and in the seven months since this government came to office, we have been clear: smart climate policy means not only protecting future generations from the biggest existential threat we face, but fighting to make working people better off today, growing our economy and confronting the economic injustices we face.

In a world where climate policy is being questioned, this government’s message to those in the Tory and Reform parties who say that we should go backwards on climate is simple: you are wrong, and this government is going to speed up, not slow down, the clean energy transition, because that is how to grow our economy and fight for working people through our Plan for Change.

Ed Miliband is the Labour MP for Doncaster North and secretary of state for energy security and net zero

Scotland’s botanic gardens suffer ‘unimaginable’ loss of rare specimens

For more than a century, whenever winter came to Scotland, they stood tall against the wind and rain and snow. But last month, battered by Storm Éowyn, hundreds of rare and historic trees in the living collection of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh were lost.

The charity has four sites in Scotland. Its tallest tree in Edinburgh, a 166-year-old Himalayan cedar, fell during Éowyn’s gusts of up to 80mph, while Benmore Botanic Garden on the west coast has suffered “unimaginable” devastation.