It is unlikely that many voters are flocking to Pauline Hanson for her scientific insights – but that is where they are lining up, regardless
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Politics is disconnecting from long-held assumptions at historic speed and no one knows where the great unhinging will take us. On the climate crisis, denial is back in vogue – depending on what the algorithm feeds you.
One Nation’s surge in the polls suggests, for now at least, it is vying to be the most popular political party in the country. It does not accept the overwhelming evidence that the planet is warming and that extreme weather is getting worse. Instead, it argues the climate change department should be abolished because – in the strawiest of strawman arguments – it hasn’t changed the climate.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
06/13/2026 - 15:00
06/13/2026 - 15:00
Twitchers can be the subject of derision but they have greatly expanded our understanding of birdlife in the age of extinction
The discovery of a black-headed gull in Geraldton, Western Australia, has put Australian birders in a bit of a flap. Normal people might wonder why, considering it is abundant in the northern hemisphere – it is the ubiquitous resident seagull in London. But twitchers, the bucket listers of birding, are proudly not normal.
As a semi-reformed, semi-retired twitcher, you can trust me on this. Frankly, flying across the country for a black-headed gull is no biggie. Every year, Australian birding’s elite travel not just to every corner of the continent but our extralimital territories – Christmas, Cocos, the Torres Strait and Macquarie Islands – in search of birds to add to their Australian lists.
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06/13/2026 - 12:16
Four-ton Paige, brought in as surprise for attenders, made gushing debut after governor finished keynote speech
An African elephant weighing roughly 4 tons that was brought to the Texas Republican party’s annual convention to excite attenders ended up drawing widespread attention for the wrong reasons after she urinated on the convention floor and became the focus of animal welfare concerns.
Inside the George R Brown convention center in Houston on Friday, attenders had been told to prepare for a “larger-than-life surprise” after governor Greg Abbott finished his keynote speech. Organizers also displayed a message asking people to keep the aisles clear.
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06/13/2026 - 02:00
Appearance of a western reef heron in north Wales is unlikely to be the last, as heating temperatures mean species can survive Britain’s winter, say experts
It is a tropical bird typically encountered between west Africa and India, but last week a western reef heron arrived in north Wales in what is believed to be the first ever sighting in the UK.
The heron was first spotted in Foryd Bay at the weekend before flying to nearby Caernarfon harbour where it fed among the boats.
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06/13/2026 - 00:00
Exclusive: Fighting Dirty taking legal action against government over proposal it says could import weaker standards
An environmental campaign group is taking legal action against the government over proposals that it claims could fast-track chemical hazard classifications from other countries with lower standards into UK law.
Fighting Dirty claims proposals to change the classification and labelling of potentially hazardous chemicals could result in the UK weakening standards on cancer-causing substances.
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06/12/2026 - 23:00
Photosynthesis does not always result in wood growth, a key factor in carbon dioxide sequestration
Trees may not be able to store as much planet-heating carbon as hoped, a study suggests, with researchers finding photosynthesis does not always lead to wood growth.
Scientists studied 137 sites across the US and found trees stopped growing months before the point in the year at which photosynthesis stopped.
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06/12/2026 - 19:00
Climate minister Chris Bowen says country must prepare for changing world and can play bigger role in reducing emissions
Australia will find exporting fossil fuels increasingly difficult but can switch to exporting clean energy products, the president of the next UN climate negotiations has declared.
Speaking at a climate conference in Bonn, Germany, Chris Bowen, Australia’s minister for climate change and energy, argued his country had led the global push to “transition away from fossil fuels” – based on the rapid growth of renewable energy and batteries in its domestic power grids – and that its economy could manage the switch.
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06/12/2026 - 10:00
The Australian PlantBank is like no other place on Earth
See more of Jess Harwood’s cartoons here
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06/12/2026 - 10:00
Exclusive A vast area of the Bellingshausen Sea should be covered by sea ice by now, with one expert calling the loss of ice ‘depressing’
Antarctica’s west coast is missing an area of winter sea ice the size of France, sparking concerns for threatened penguins other marine life and global sea levels.
One expert said the loss of ice in the Bellingshausen Sea was “depressing” and the failure of ice to form could have intensified a heatwave over the continent’s peninsula last week that saw daytime temperatures peak at 15.4C which is more than 20C above average.
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06/12/2026 - 09:00
Despite plunging border crossings, the Trump administration is circumventing laws to expedite building in a vast, pristine wilderness
The Trump administration has waived a slew of environmental and historical preservation laws that would allow it to build a towering border wall that cuts through Big Bend national park, a vast protected wilderness in south Texas.
Congress poured a whopping $46.5bn for border wall construction into the “Big, Beautiful” bill last year, supercharging Donald Trump’s ambition to wall off the southern border with Mexico. The longest unwalled stretches lie along a roughly 500-mile (800km) section of west Texas that Customs and Border Protection calls the “Big Bend sector”.
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