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‘Every time the rain falls, the fear comes back’: life in Lagos under the constant threat of floods
As Nigeria braces for another season of devastating rains, people affected describe the mental toll of repeatedly rebuilding their lives
Murky water first tore down a perimeter fence, then bubbled into the yard before spilling into every room. Within minutes, electronics, kitchen appliances, furniture, documents and academic certificates lay submerged.
With the water rising rapidly, Daniel Ebiesua evacuated his home in the Shogunle area of Lagos, with his wife, their two-week-old baby, four-year-old son and his mother-in-law to a neighbour’s upstairs apartment. There they stayed trapped for four hours, helplessly watching the flood swallow the streets below.
Continue reading...‘Like a sauna’: London tube travellers swelter in temperatures higher than legal limit for cattle
The tube cannot easily be adapted to cope with heatwaves, making conditions almost unbearable
As the escalator descends below ground at King’s Cross St Pancras station in London, the shift from what was already a hot station entrance to the furnace-like subterranean depths is perceptible.
On the tube it’s worse: a man leans back in his seat, eyes closed, sweltering; people hold electric fans an inch away from their faces. London commuters are known for their stoicism and the heat appears to be another tribulation to accept. They will need to: heatwaves in the capital are becoming routine.
Continue reading...Days of salted codfish and cabbage leaves are over: how climate crisis is shaping Tour de France’s future
Heatwaves have long been part of the Tour but temperatures now are pushing the riders to limit of human endurance
The Tour de France and the heat of the midday sun are old bedfellows, going back long before an era when the biggest catastrophe of the Tour’s opening week was a major fault in the Visma team bus’s air conditioning. Flip back 50 years to my favourite Tour read, the late Geoffrey Nicholson’s The Great Bike Race, and we find the doyen of cycling writers discussing a Tour that began in baking conditions in the Vendée, and continued through the canicule in central France and Normandy.
“The heatwave,” wrote Nicholson, “is becoming a serious worry.” He describes the late Raymond “Pou-Pou” Poulidor as “an old sweat” – pun alert – “in legionnaire matters”, who was “careful to limit himself to two litres of water on a stage … it is part of the collective wisdom of the peloton that too much water leads to depression and fatigue.” Tell that to the Tour men of 2026 as they glug down one bidon after another.
Continue reading...The 13 biggest myths about heatwaves – and how to bust them
With some still unable to accept humanity’s role in climate chaos, we tackle common misconceptions and deceptions
Some people – and media organisations – still have difficulty connecting the heatwaves currently gripping much of the world and human-caused climate chaos. Others are in outright denial. So how to address their evasions, distractions and lies?
The Guardian has trawled through climate sceptics’ claims and put their doubts to one of the UK’s top climate scientists, Prof Ed Hawkins at the University of Reading.
Continue reading...‘Children were calling for their mummies’: UK pupils struggle in 40C-plus classrooms
Teachers call for schools to be urgently adapted for hot weather amid reports of nausea, fainting and heatstroke
The extreme heat that has hit the UK twice in the past few weeks has left teachers struggling to cope as temperatures in some classrooms climb above 40C, with pupils and staff suffering from heatstroke, nausea and headaches.
Teachers say they have been desperately trying to keep children safe, with some covering younger pupils in wet paper towels as they lie on the floor, while older students have been given trays of water under their desks to put their feet in.
Continue reading...Support for climate and biodiversity policies differs across cultural worldviews in Japan
F.C.C. Approves Test of Space Mirror to Light Night Sky Despite Outcry
Trump Administration Taps Climate Science Critic to Oversee National Climate Assessment
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Pacific gray whales facing ‘catastrophic’ die-off as climate crisis hits food supply
Trump administration urged to relist a species in ‘very, very serious trouble’ under Endangered Species Act
Climate change is driving a gray whale “catastrophic mortality event” in the Pacific Ocean as melting sea ice depletes food sources and the animals starve, environmental groups warn.
Meanwhile, a range of other issues, like ship strikes, oil spills, microplastic pollution, algal blooms and Russian harvesting are also probably contributing to the die-off that has nearly halved the whales’ estimated population. It fell from 20,000 in 2019 to fewer than 13,000 this year, and the deaths appear to be accelerating.
Continue reading...Advanced Recycling Hits a Rough Patch
MPs call on UK government to host televised emergency briefing on climate crisis
As UK swelters in another heatwave, 50-minute Chris Packham film outlines threats to security, economy and health
MPs are calling on the UK government to host a televised national climate emergency briefing in response to what has been described as the most “insidious threat to our society”.
In November, in the “first-of-its-kind, national emergency briefing”, nine experts gave stark assessments in Westminster Hall of the scale of the changes needed to adapt the country to the rapidly changing climate and ecological landscape.
Continue reading...‘He’s forcing higher bills’: Trump spends billions to kill clean energy and keep coal alive
Critics accuse president of ‘fattening the wallets of his cronies’ as working Americans face higher energy rates
The Trump administration has directly spent $2.7bn of taxpayer money on its crusade against wind power while pouring $1.125bn into boosting coal, which critics say is pushing up Americans’ bills.
They say the moves are evidence that the president aims to serve fossil-fuel companies like those which donated record sums to his presidential campaign, rather than the working-class Americans to whom he pledged to lower energy bills and other costs.
Continue reading...We know how to mourn other humans – but what about ecological grief?
In Iceland, people commemorated its first glacier formally declared lost to climate change. Western culture needs more of these rituals
I remember interviewing a North Atlantic right whale expert years ago. He was a practical, science-minded man. But as we discussed a female whale that had lost her calf, he became visibly emotional. She had lost the previous one, too, struck by a ship. He seemed almost embarrassed by the depth of his feeling.
I wasn’t surprised. I found his grief honorable.
Continue reading...The Very Good and Very Bad News on Climate
Pollutionwatch: How harmful ozone builds up near ground in heatwaves
Concentrations of gas were continuously raised in Europe during June hot spell, with potentially deadly effects
Widespread air pollution was a feature of June’s record-breaking heat across western Europe and is likely to increase again as the UK experiences its third heatwave of the summer.
UK weather warnings for extreme heat from 22 June were followed by a rare high air pollution alert from the London mayor.
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