Ford denies having created ‘defeat devices’ in legal action on behalf of 1.6 million owners against five carmakers
About a million Ford diesel cars were sold in the UK with serious defects in components supposed to curb toxic exhaust emissions, the high court has been told.
The highly polluting vehicles were produced and sold between 2016 and 2018 after Ford’s engineers became aware of the issues, and many were never formally recalled or fixed, lawyers said.
Continue reading...
Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/15/2025 - 01:00
11/14/2025 - 21:44
With a reported boom in people becoming snake handlers, Guardian Australia's Joe Hinchcliffe attended a venomous snake handling course in Queensland to investigate what's involved in training to wrangle some of the world's deadliest snakes. Christina Zdenek and Chris Hay, the herpetologist pair running the course, say they've observed a growth in their industry: '[The] number of snake catchers has exploded in Australia, and that's in every Australian state,' says Chris. 'And every year we hear about this increase in snake numbers. But the fact is it's the increase in human population that is then catalysing this increase in snake interaction.'
Gone in 60 milliseconds: dramatic slow-motion snake bites reveal clues about how fangs and venom kill prey
Continue reading...
11/14/2025 - 13:30
The fossil-fuel era is drawing to a close, but at a pace far too slow for the planet’s good or a fair transition to a clean energy future
The weather in Belém, wrote the Guardian’s environment editor, offers a convenient metaphor for the UN climate talks being held in the Brazilian city. Sunny mornings begin in blazing optimism before the Amazon’s clouds gather and the deluge begins. Cop30 has followed the same pattern. It opened with sunshine – an agenda agreed on day one. The storms were deferred for later “consultations” on climate finance, carbon border tariffs and the question of how to close the yawning gap between national climate pledges and the Paris agreement’s safe pathway. These await Cop30’s second week.
They are likely to be more than mere squalls. The International Energy Agency confirmed last week that the fossil-fuel era is ending. Its annual report said the world will hit peak coal, oil and gas this decade and see declines thereafter. The economist Fadhel Kaboub, who advises developing nations on climate, argues this is not “because of political will, but because the economics of renewables is winning”. Africa, he says, can generate about 1,000 times the electricity it will need in 2040 – which could be exported. Globally, however, hydrocarbon use is easing far too slowly. The fight over money and a just transition matters at Cop30.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...
11/14/2025 - 12:53
Weaning ourselves off gas is the only way to reduce energy bills long term. Cutting support for this is exactly the ‘sticking-plaster politics’ Labour promised to end
After years of painfully high energy bills, diminishing household budgets and stalled investment, this year’s budget, on 26 November, should be the moment when the government finally starts to confront why the UK’s energy system is so expensive. And yet, if recent briefings suggesting that Labour will dramatically scale back the heat pump subsidy for households are to be believed, it is now repeating exactly the same mistakes as its predecessors.
People want relief from painful energy bills. In the long term, electrification is the only way to provide this. In practice, that means switching from gas boilers to heat pumps, shifting from petrol cars to electric vehicles: boosting access to technologies that are modern, cheaper to run, and are already becoming mainstream. At present, our energy system protects the legacy gas-based system, subsidising supply and penalising demand in ways that keep gas artificially cheap and electricity artificially expensive, even when electric technologies cost less to operate.
Camilla Born is the CEO of Electrify Britain, a campaigning organisation founded by EDF and Octopus Energy
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...
11/14/2025 - 11:23
Munduruku people demand to speak to Brazil’s president, saying they are never listened to
Cop30: click here for full Guardian coverage of the climate talks in Brazil
Protesters blockaded the main entrance to the Cop30 climate conference for several hours early on Friday morning, demanding to speak to Brazil’s president about the plight of the country’s Indigenous peoples.
About 50 people from the Munduruku people in the Amazon basin blocked the entrance with some assistance from international green groups, watched by a huge phalanx of riot police, soldiers and military vehicles.
Continue reading...
11/14/2025 - 09:40
Dozens of Indigenous activists blocked the entrance of the Cop30 summit venue on Friday, demanding that the Brazilian government halt all development projects in the Amazon, including mining, logging, oil drilling and the building of a new railway for transporting mining and agricultural products. The protesters staged a sit-in creating long queues and forcing delegates to use a side entrance to resume their negotiations on tackling the climate crisis
Cop30 – latest updates
Continue reading...
11/11/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 11 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00154-1
Climate-resilient fisheries are more resilient in general
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
Read more »
